Planning on Overclocking, radiator quesiton

If you going to use a radiator in the rear exhaust fan location, you have to use it for exhaust. By using your radiator as an exhaust, the fans that push the air through the radiator will be drawing/pushing the warm air from inside your case through the radiator, and then to the outside of the case. By doing it this way, your using your cases 'warm' air to 'cool' the radiator, which 'cools' the fluid used by the radiator, to 'cool' the cpu.

Now, ideally you want the radiator to be used to suck/pull air from the outside of your case. By doing it this way, your pulling 'cool' air past the radiator. Now, lets say your ambient temperature of the room is at 70 degrees, and your gaming so your inside case temperature is 100 degrees. With the pull configuration, your using the 70 degree 'cool' air to run through your radiator and cool the liquid. With the push configuration, your using the 100 degree 'warm' case air to run through your radiator and cool the liquid.

It is recommended that you use radiators in pull, as your then using air that is cooler, thus cooling the radiator quicker and cooler. Yet when you use for push configuration, your using warm air so the radiator wont cool as quick, nor will it cool as low.

Now, that said. If you've got good airflow, id personally say good airflow is minimal one fan as intake in front of case, and one exhaust fan top rear of case. If you could, especially with overclocking, use a fan on the side of the case as intake as well, blowing cool air on your motherboard. When you overclock, your not only adding extra voltage/heat, but your running those volts/extra heat more often. So if your board doesn't have liquid cooling vrms, north and south bridge, you'll need moving air to cool down those areas. If your board doesn't even have heatsinks on those areas I really wouldn't even recommend overclocking at all. As if its just bare capatiors you will more than likely reach their thermal limits and they will pop. One of the main reason people go high end air coolers over water cooling is that the cpu air coolers also blow an extreme amount of air over their motherboards as well, keeping not only the cpu cool, but the important areas of the motherboard as well.

Anyone can tell you than a $75 air cooler will cool your cpu as well if not better than a 120mm closed loop liquid cooler. Not only that but it will keep your motherboard way cooler as well. Normally, you would only go liquid cooling if your case has 2 front intakes, at least one side intake, an exhaust fan, and the radiator is located on the top of the case sucking air in and pushing it not only through the radiator, but past all the motherboard areas.

Any other questions about either water cooling or overclocking, there are several forums with very very in depth warnings recommendations troubleshootings tips ect. Theyre called stickies. Theres an amd overclocking stickie and theres a water cooling stickie. I recommend you read through those first before doing anything that might possibly ruin your setup.


And as far as can you use one or not, if you reread my first post reply to you, I explicitly stated that I had an identical cpu and case setup and it ran extremely well. So I don't know how else to make it simpler than that, as far as answering your question.

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can, just make sure you have adequate air circulation.

But you would be far better off with a good $50 air cooler than using a 120mm radiator.