Hello Tom's Hardware community, This will be my 3rd time building a PC and I have found this website to be very useful in my decision making. As you all know buying a new system can be intimidating with the sheer volume of products on the market, so its nice to have a resource like Tom's hardware. My budget is just over 3K, and I live in Canada so prices may vary. This system is mainly going to be used for gaming, and possibly overclocking. Here's a look at the hardware in this build, everything is pretty much settled on, everything except the CPU cooler.
Case:NZXT Phantom Full Tower
CPU:Intel Core i5 3570K
Motherboard:Asus Maximus V Formula
Memory:Gskill Ripjaws 32GB PC3-12800
HD1:Seagate Barracuda 2TB
HD2:Intel SSD 335 Series 240GB
Optical:Asus DRW-24B1ST 24x DVD-RW Drive
Video Card: Dual EVGA GTX 680 Superclocked 2GB
Power Supply: OCZ ZX Series 1250Watt Modular PSU (Probably more than I need)
So I have a dilemma on choosing a cooler for my CPU. Im having a hard time deciding between closed loop water cooling and Air cooling. From what I've read a good air cooler can perform just as well as a closed loop cooling unit. The one thing that I hate about air cooling is the size of the heatsinks. I also considered a complete water cooling loop but I don't wanna be a part of the maintenance involved. Here's a list of coolers I'm having trouble deciding on:
Antec Kuhler H20 920
Corsair H100i with after market 120mm fans
Zalman LQ-320
Noctua D14
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
From this list what would you recommend using for this build? Thanks!
Case:NZXT Phantom Full Tower
CPU:Intel Core i5 3570K
Motherboard:Asus Maximus V Formula
Memory:Gskill Ripjaws 32GB PC3-12800
HD1:Seagate Barracuda 2TB
HD2:Intel SSD 335 Series 240GB
Optical:Asus DRW-24B1ST 24x DVD-RW Drive
Video Card: Dual EVGA GTX 680 Superclocked 2GB
Power Supply: OCZ ZX Series 1250Watt Modular PSU (Probably more than I need)
So I have a dilemma on choosing a cooler for my CPU. Im having a hard time deciding between closed loop water cooling and Air cooling. From what I've read a good air cooler can perform just as well as a closed loop cooling unit. The one thing that I hate about air cooling is the size of the heatsinks. I also considered a complete water cooling loop but I don't wanna be a part of the maintenance involved. Here's a list of coolers I'm having trouble deciding on:
Antec Kuhler H20 920
Corsair H100i with after market 120mm fans
Zalman LQ-320
Noctua D14
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
From this list what would you recommend using for this build? Thanks!
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