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CPU Cooler vs. Water Cooling for my Build

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  • Water Cooling
  • CPUs
  • Cooling
  • Build
  • New Build
Last response: in CPUs
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August 25, 2014 7:59:29 AM

I'm planning on getting the 4670k for my new build, and I'm probably going to overclock it. Do I need a water cooler, or is a good CPU cooler enough?

More about : cpu cooler water cooling build

a c 93 à CPUs
August 25, 2014 8:03:54 AM

The only reason I'd get a closed loop liquid cooler is for aesthetics. They look really good in case with a window. Just personal preference.

If the case has no window I'd always go with air cooling. They do just as good a job and tend to be quieter. Plus zero risk of water loop failing and getting my parts wet. Granted it's a low chance of that happening anyway, but it's not a zero percent chance.

For air cooling if you want an agressive overclock I'd look to Noctua's lineup, like the NH-D14. They are not the best looking coolers around, but they are the best performers.

If you just want a mild overclock the cooler master Hyper 212 evo is the typical recommendation.
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August 25, 2014 8:18:22 AM

I've had fantastic success with Corsair's H100i. It dropped my tempts 10C over air cooling and was closed looped, so virtually no worry of leaks, etc. I would suggest this if you are overclocking. The other benefit over the H100i and an air cooler is the ambient case temperature. An air cooler is going to be spewing its hot air all over your motherboard until one of your case fans exhausts the hot air. The Liquid cooler is going to keep the heat away from your components and transfer it to your radiator which will be immediately expelled from the case without getting near your components. This means your video cards will have cooler ambient air to cool themselves.

Obviously, you could also build your own loop for even better performance. I've had many huge and expensive complicated loops in previous systems. They will cool much better if designed well and look amazing, but will cost a fortune and be more prone to leaks.
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August 25, 2014 8:23:45 AM

Water cooling if you are going to do a custom loop and like my compadre mentioned, they are for aesthetics. You can air cooling options that are just as good if not better than water cooling without paying the premium.
I recommend the Noctua NH-D15, the best CPU cooler out there and can be picked up for £70-75. It cools just as good as water cooling system and is quiet running at a high speed, it is a large improvement over the NH-D14 which I currently have and love. The aesthetics are not pleasing but you stick LED strips if you want it to look nice haha.
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a b à CPUs
August 25, 2014 2:55:40 PM

There are a bunch of twin-tower heatpipe coolers to choose from that do compete well with 240mm radiator AIO CLCs. The only time the CLC's perform better is when the fans are running at higher RPM, and making more noise. decibel for decibel there is really no significant cooling advantage to water loops until the system is LARGER than could ever be installed on top of a CPU. (external rads, or multiple internal rads, etc)

Keep in mind, that a heatpipe cooler IS a liquid cooler just like a CLC cooler. The difference is that in the heatpipe design, the liquid is pumped by a thermally driven phase change (low boiling point is achieved with a vacuum environment), whereas in the CLC, the liquid is pumped by a motor driven impeller. Both types of cooling take advantage of a copper to liquid interface at the CPU.

On a final note, the power dissipated by modern 22nm Intel chips is just not that substantial. Many of these double tower heatsinks and 240mm rads are capable of keeping a CPU in temp limits at well over 200W dissipation levels (as evidenced by the thousands of people out there who have overclocked FX chips to 200W+ levels on these same types of coolers). All practical overclocking on Haswell occurs at <150W at the chip. There's quite a bit of performance "compression" caused by this. You'll see that maximum overclocks on haswell tend to be effected more heavily by your luck of the draw on the chip, than by the HSF chosen. You could just as easily wind up at 4.5ghz on a $100 HSF as you will at 4.6ghz on a $30 HSF, so don't count on a more expensive HSF necessarily guaranteeing an improved outcome by a useful margin.
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August 25, 2014 3:11:20 PM

the best solution, short of going LN2, is a full custom loop or two (depending). Not only do the look great if done right and they cut about 30-40'C off your GPU temps alone and at least mine cut my CPU temp by 20'C. My loop temp doesn't get above 31'C and no part in my case gets over 51'C under full load. :)  Not to mention it's super quiet compared to any air cooler.
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