*Long story short, what's the best CPU cooler out there for £60 ($85) at the moment? I'm in the UK if you can find any DEALS I'm not asking for the best "bang for your buck" here, but for the cooler that'll give me the best thermals in that price range (within reason, I mean if it's something like a £20 difference for <5 degrees cooler in benchmarks, I'll go for the cheaper). Clearancewise, I have the corsair obsidian 650D (so, 185mm)... and corsair vengeance pro RAM. Oh yeah, I'm on 1150.
I Could probably push it up to £70 if there's a big performance increase for <£10.
Will order the said cooler in just under two weeks from now unless there's a better solution. I'd like to take this whole ditching-the-stock-heatsink malarkey as an opportunity to begin my magical trip down the path of overclocking too FYI. :)
Ta.
*Here's the "long" story if you fancy a read:
So, I recently acquired my first GPU... and I'm still using the intel stock heatsink (hangs head in shame). It had been doing fine, but what I didn't anticipate was the fact having a GPU would have an extremely detrimental effect on the airflow around that tiny stock heatsink. Like, a +10/20 degree difference for my poor 4790K when I'm rendering stuff out in blender (using all eight threads, anyway). My solution to this in the meantime is to just use 4 or maybe 6 threads at once to render stuff out, but it still hits the 90s (eek!).
lol, wow. Crikey... Argos. They've only got the corsair Hydro series there anyway, and all the AIOs at £60 will be nowhere near as good as say, an NH-D14.
Looking here (Noctua NH-D14) and here (Cryorig R1), the noctua's quieter (well, duh, it's noctua). Considering it's the same price I think I'll stick with the NH-D14.
@furryface, those benchmarks are at idle. It's the load temps I'm worried about. I'd be happy with something that was 60 degrees at idle, and was like +/- 5 degrees from that all of the time (inc at load) if such a thing existed.
A lot better thermal performance on the Cryorig though, almost 20 C difference. If you want low noise, get a be quiet! Dark Rock 3 or similar. Or just turn down the fans on the Cryorig with you your motherboard controls.
noctua nhd14 about that price, best youll get, but the hyper212 evo is a third the price, and is really not that far behind ive owned multiples of both in my day. they are both pretty large. the noctua being FUCKING HUGE. ive had my i5-2500k to 5.0 ghz on that d-14 before anf the evo
Having a serious look into the cryorig now. There's a good review of it here (the R1 ultimate, actually) putting it up against the NH-D15, H100i, Phanteks TC14PE and some zalman thing. It wins... matching at idle and beating the NH-D15 by a couple degrees (tbf, within margin of error) at load. It being louder was a problem only really because the extra noise doesn't seem too worth the marginal performance increase...
...HOWEVER, at amazon right now, they only sell the NH-D14 (something)2011 (which is you can't guess by the name only fits socket 2011, lol). You can get a bracket for this but it's sold by amazon for £20 (lolwut?). The NH-D15 with the bracket for fitting it to 1150 is sold on amazon, but from a seller in Germany. For £55ish (inc shipping). The Cryorig R1 ultimate is £60 at amazon atm. From a seller in the same country as me. Hopefully, therefore, with better delivery. Considering the marginal performance increase from the NH-D15 (not even the NH-D14) AND the fact that the delivery'd be better, I'd reckon it's worth the extra £5.
Only by 2-3C and the Scythe Kotetsu does it with minimal noise.
Although that website states 35-45 dB(A) I don't know how they got that? Silent PC Review has it's max at 12V (29 dBA@1m) and I attest to it's quietness, I can't hear mine (even under load).
I recommended it based on the thermal to noise performance not the price, that's just a nice side benefit :)
...it's the R1 universal, so the R1 ultimate will be even better than that... and the benchmarks are at idle (didn't realize earlier, was 2AM at the time). So, it could be the same at idle but it might not handle as much heat as well.
Due to the lack of credibility to the schythe kotetsu (can't find any benchmarks of it at load on the same rig as a benchmark of a R1 ultimate). I think I'll probably stick with the R1 ultimate.
I probably got a bit distracted by the noise aspect. It obviously could be a dealbreaker but I doubt it'll be a problem with the R1 ultimate. I haven't seen any horror stories yet.
EDIT: I now realise why @Pholostan recommended the R1 universal, RAM clearance. The corsair vengeance pro heatsinks are 44mm high. R1 ultimate fits up to 35mm. Damn. The R1 universal is £5 more too. Still worth it it seems anyway.
