will Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus/Evo fit in this mid-tower case+micro ATX mobo? if not then plz recommend other HSF

Dec 16, 2014
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as the title describes, good sirs :)

some background story:

I'm planning to upgrade to i7 3770k, but I read everywhere that the stock HSF is sucked. afraid of my future CPU longevity, I want to buy an aftermarket ones. Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus/Evo (is there any difference between Plus and Evo btw?) is often mentioned everywhere as the best bang for the buck. but after reading the dimension and see some pics, I think it will not fit into my rig?

my spec:

case: Simbadda SimCool SMC-5817
pretty much unknown brand in the West, this is a mid-range price for casual users to mid-range non-enthusiast gamers. full metal casing, except the transparent part on the side panel is made from plastic. it comes with its own (not pure, but up to) 430w PSU, but I switched it with Corsair CX600, 600w, 80 plus bronze, builder series v2 a long time ago. plz refer to the attached pics for dimension and air flow.

mobo: Asrock B75M

it's a micro ATX form mobo. and it's a B75 chip. bought it when I was still very new to computer stuff, so it was kinda randomly bought. I only knew Asrock is good, the price was okay to my wallet.

I know I wouldn't be able to OC the i7 with this. but I don't mind, I'm pretty much a casual user, I don't understand well how to OC, though I'm interested in it. the only stock available at my local store for LGA 1155 i7 is the K series one. I'm fine with this, only around 6$ higher compared to standard 3770 price. the extra 1000 Mhz is cool anyway. I don't have more money to buy a Haswell, because I have to buy a new mobo then. so I'm kinda stuck with my current mobo, which I think is not too shabby?

Okay, now let the pics speak:











Code:


so what do you think, good sirs and ladies? will CM Hyper 212 Plus/Evo fit? I think it will not, since my case width is only 18 cm. if that's the case, then what good brand and type of HSF will fit? the smaller ones, I think. it could be another type of Cool Master or other brand, as long as it's got the same good quality, ie. achieved low temp will be the same, and same/close price range (slightly higher is okay) with that Hyper 212.

I know there are a lot of brands and types out there, so many that I'm overwhelmed, I don't know where to start. so I thought I better ask you guys and girls, user to user. because users know best by experience.



also I wish for the HSF to be not too hard to install. of course, I'll have the store guy installs it for me on the first time purchase. but for instance, a year later, I might want to clean my case and the components, I hope I won't having too much trouble in disassembling and reassembling, and applying TIM on the HSF.



btw looking at the small sized case and mobo, by installing a big heatsink hanging over there, won't it add extra heat or blocking air flow, coz it's using extra space inside the case? just thinking out loud.



also, the fan TDP is important. as I've mentioned above I'm using Corsair CX600 along with these components below, so I hope my PSU can supply enough power.

- MSI GTX 970 Twin Frozr V
- internal HDD Hitachi 500GB 7200 RPM (upper one in the pic)
- internal HDD Seagate 1TB 5400 RPM (below one in the pic)
- LG DVD-RW (seldom used nowadays)
- soon-to-be-bought i7 3770k
- soon-to-be bought RAM Corsair 1600 4Gb x2. I think I'm gonna buy the standard chip form ones, not the ones with fancy heatsink, as I'm afraid it'll hinder the HSF? there's no differences in performance, right? standard and with heatsink. the heatsink one is only good for OCing I think, which I will never do. besides the standard ones are cheaper obviously.
- 2 standard 8 cm fans: 1 on the side panel (came with the case), 1 on the bottom front (random brand cheap fan). both are fast.
- 2 standard 12cm fans: 1 on the side panel (random brand cheap fan, kinda slower just a bit compared to other fans), 1 on the back (came with the case, fast)
- 1 better and faster Deepcool 12cm at the front
- sometimes I plug in two external HDD 1 TB USB 3.0 (watching movies, copying/moving files, never while gaming)



so, what kinda low temp I would get with an aftermarket HSF? idle 20-30C? full load 50-60C? as I've mentioned a couple of times above, I won't do OCing, or rather my mobo won't allow it :) maybe a measly 400Mhz up from the BIOS, but again I think I won't do this anyway. I think this i7 is already fast enough for now? well, I'll do it 2 or 3 or 5 years later maybe, when newer games are already too demanding for my rig :p

for reference, my GPU temp on idle is around 33C when the AC is on, 35-37C when the AC is off. on load (gaming),I've seen 65-67C the highest, regardless the AC is on or off. the temp is actually lower when I play Tomb Raider, and higher when I'm playing The Evil Within. obviously graphics-wise TR is more complicated than TEW, but again TEW is badly optimized anyway. btw is this GPU temp good or... not so good?

my i3 2120 temp is around 38-41C when the AC is on, add 2-3C when the AC is off. on load (gaming) I've seen 70-75C the highest. I use stock HSF as the pic shows. this bad temp is my fault. recently I cleaned the heatsink, then just put it back onto the CPU without cleaning the old TIM, and reapply new TIM. I thought I'm gonna sell this i3 and get i7 soon (2 days top, depends on the reply here though) anyway, why bother :p as for the temp b4 cleaning the heatsink, I don't know. I became educated in monitoring temps just recently :p

I got all temps through MSI Afterburner. I'm not sure if I can trust it? what's better program? I've read RealTemp, CoreTemp, not sure which one is better.

thank you. awaiting good replies :)
 
while the stock cooler suck i think it is fine if you don't OC your CPU at all. 212 will easily fit into your case. as for temp for me anything below 40c is good for idle CPU. youcan use coretemp or hardware monitor for temperature monitoring.
 
Dec 16, 2014
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4,630


so do you think I should try the stock HSF first and see how's the temp? if with the stock HSF, the ideal idle temp is below 40C, then what's the ideal load temp? I forgot to mention that I live in tropical South East Asia, so the ambient temp could be... harsh... that GPU temp, 33C idle, on load is 65-67C, what do you think? good?

it's kinda a hassle though, make double trip to the computer store, 1st buy the i7, then buy an aftermarket HSF if the stock one doesn't up to its job. though if it is, yay for my wallet.

which one is better, CoreTemp or HardwareMonitor? I prefer standalone program, so I don't have to install and make my Windows registry more dirty than now :p



that's what I'm afraid of. so no any aftermarket HSF out there would work after all? and it's the case fault, not actually the micro ATX form mobo? even if it'll fit, that would leave little space on the mobo, I dunno if this is bad or not...
 

Pr3di

Honorable
Tou can try to check if you have 160mm clearence from the CPU to the case panel, but that`s hard to measure exactly.
There`s not a lot of info on the internet about your case and internal sizes.

In case you will not go for a 212 Evo, you can check these out:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/noctua-cpu-cooler-nhl12
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/zalman-cpu-cooler-cnps90f - cheaper option

Or go through this and see if you like something:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/low-profile-heat-sink-mini-itx,3639.html
 
Dec 16, 2014
52
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4,630
sorry for the late reply, guys. been busy hunting components and debating with my friend which one is the best buy

CM Hyper 212 Plus is discontinued in my country, now it's Hyper 212 X Turbo everywhere. but I think it's the same thing, hopefully slightly better. now, in the West, the reviews on CM Hyper 212 mostly positive, right? tho' I did see some negative, but that's in the minority. the best bang for buck, people said. strange that the reviews in my country are 50-50 between positive and mediocre (not really suck, but it can do better, they said). pondering carefully now. I live in the tropic, so PC cooling is twice harder here

thx for the recommendation, unfortunately Noctua price here are pretty crazy, while Zalman is very cheap, but I don't think I like the shape of it. and I don't really like low profile fans, since they're not "not towering standing thing with only the legs touching the CPU", so the heat tends to spread anywhere else. so I think I'm stuck with Cooler Master? just need someone's positive testimony who is using/have used it to ease up the anxiety inside me :p

alright, so I've manually measure my case inside's size, right from the actual mobo to the inside border where the side panel is supposed to attached on, the width is 17.5 cm, so as long as I moved the upper side fan on the side panel, it'll fit. I think I'll attach that 8 cm fan to the dvd drive bay with some zip ties. actually I'm more worried now about the Hyper 212 won't fit my micro ATX form mobo, I'll make another thread about that.

I might get a new case, though the ones I afford are still 18 cm in width... my question is... so... 2 cm (or 1.5 cm with my current case) gap between the side panel and heatsink is... okay? I dunno... I'm thinking about bad heat spread? air flow disrupt? or I'm just being paranoid and it's actually meant to be like that, ie. by design, as long as it'll fit inside the case, ie. not hitting the side panel?

thanks :)
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
alright, so I've manually measure my case inside's size, right from the actual mobo to the inside border where the side panel is supposed to attached on, the width is 17.5 cm,

You need to measure from the actual face of the CPU, not the motherboard. But if your case is 18cm , I find it hard to believe you still have 17.5cm left over.
 
Dec 16, 2014
52
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4,630
ah, no, 17.5 cm is the "inside-the-case" width straight from the mobo surface to the inner edge things where the side panel is supposed to attach on

if you're talking about the real full width of the case, with both side panels are actually closed, it's around 20 cm or less, I'd say 19.7 cm

so what do you think? safe? with that 1.5 cm or 2 cm gap to the side panel, will it be okay? nothing harmful will happen? also the gaps between the heatsink to the GPU (1 cm) and the fan to RAM (not sure, I hope the fan won't touch it) will be very close

thanks for the reply :)
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


Correct. 1cm is fine.
 

Pr3di

Honorable
Go for the i5.
Even if games will gradually use Hyperthreading in the future, the games must also run on i5`s and even i3`s.
You might encounter slight bottlenecks on intensive CPU games, but for most that rely on the GPU, you should be just fine with the 970 for a couple of years.