Will a better CPU Cooler improve performance?

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007MI6Bond

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As the title asks. My specs are as follows:
GTX 1060 6GB
i5 7600
CM GeminII M4
My games run buttery smooth, but after some playing time I see some FPS drops and the inside of my PC really hot, along with a 90c temp on my CPU. I have realised that the CM cooler was a bad buy and Im willing to upgrade to a H80i V2 liquid cooler (luckily on sale too right now). Note, I have a slim case and air coolers in South Africa are quite limited (not many low profiles).

If I get the 'better' cooler, would there be significantly less FPS drops, lower temps and better performance?
 
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JackNaylorPE
Is the CPU overclocked ? If not, you do not need anything more than the stock cooler. I would suspect a bad mount if you are reaching 90C

As for the CLC, be aware that in order to compete with less expensive air coolers (i,e. Noctua's NH-D15), you are talking vacuum cleaner like noise levels near 60 dbA with those 2500 rpm fans

CPU_OC_typical_b.gif
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JackNaylorPE

JackNaylorPE

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Is the CPU overclocked ? If not, you do not need anything more than the stock cooler. I would suspect a bad mount if you are reaching 90C

As for the CLC, be aware that in order to compete with less expensive air coolers (i,e. Noctua's NH-D15), you are talking vacuum cleaner like noise levels near 60 dbA with those 2500 rpm fans

CPU_OC_typical_b.gif
 
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Dunlop0078

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90c package temp in games? What is your ambient temp? That is quite hot for gaming, assuming that cooler is mounted correctly it is not adequate for that cpu if you are hitting 90c in games.

If the CPU is throttling to stay cool which it will do at 100c, then yes a better cooler may help performance depending on how much the cpu is throttling. A new cooler may be a good idea even if the cpu is not throttling, I would not be comfortable letting my cpu hit 90c while gaming.
 
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atomicWAR

atomicWAR

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A better cooler would help a little but I am not sure they would enough to justify the cost of the cooler. Though those temps are too warm for my comfort. If you were overclocking I would say yes but your not with that chip. Plus AIO liquid coolers tend to only be as good as high end air coolers. I live in Hawaii myself and have a serious open watercooling setup myself because the ambient temps are warm year round here and I overclock. I do use an AIO liquid cooler on a server but as a whole I am underwhelmed (to loud, temps are okish) though I built a rig for my nephew and his AIO liquid cooler does really good on the noise front.

All that said it may help with some frame drops if it is due to thermal throttling. One way to check is look at your CPU usage/temps with a program like openhardwaremonitor or even CPU-z. If you see your clock speed drop when at high temps then you have thermal throttling. However if you see one or more threads near 100% usage (say 85-90+%) with no clock speed drop below stock then you actually have a CPU bottleneck and the only way to fix that is to buy a new CPU with more cores/threads like an i7 7700(k or not). Or a faster one, though I recommend the more cores/thread route. I see a lot of CPU bottlenecking with i5s now a days. Anyways here some links to the software I mentioned

http://openhardwaremonitor.org/downloads/
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

Let me know what your temps and CPU usage are like. Also what games are you playing when you get these frame drops? Also you may need to reapply your thermal paste. Your cooler may not be mounted tightly or the old paste could be dry.
 
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atomicWAR

atomicWAR

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Shouldn't be Oc'd with an i5 7600 non k, assuming is posted correctly as a non K chip.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Your problem is likely your slim case not supplying sufficient airflow for the cooler to do its job.
What is the make/model of your case?

If you take the case covers off does that help much?

As to performance, Intel slowdown temperature is around 100c. You are not there, but perilously close.



 
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atomicWAR

atomicWAR

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Yeah that was what I was thinking. He is hot but he shouldn't be throttling quite yet. The OP really needs to check his CPU usage while in game. I suspect, depending on the games being played, he may be bottlenecking. It is tough to say without some more info like CPU usage, in game temps and CPU speed. Also how much ram do you have? How many sticks are you running?
 
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