I’m wondering if my hyper 212 evo turbo is enough for 5Ghz on this cpu, or do i need noisy AIO-watercooler?
I can’t speak from personal experience, but if you have the clearence, have you considered something like the Noctua NH-D15? You can get it in black (chromax) if you dislike their brown colour scheme?
P.S. I would imagine you would need something a bit larger than the 212 for 5Ghz, but I can’t say that with 100% confidence. If you have the space for it, then maybe a larger AIO would do the job, something like the NZXT 360mm Kraken X72.
That would be an ok cooler for a stock 9600k however probably not the best for an overclock like that.
That’s exactly what I was thinking, if you’re 100% determined on getting to 5Ghz, you’ll need a different cooler, whether it’s an AIO or not, I think you may need to do a tonne of research into that yourself. While I’ve not seen any exact numbers on temps or stability, etc. I can confirm that I’ve read that people have achieved this with the NH-D15.
Nocuta are great but there are options between a D15 and an Hyper 212.
Even with the D15 you are going to need some good case air flow. No air cooler can be effective if it’s sat in a hotbox. The true advantage of an AIO is the ability to move the heat exchanging part of the cooler to the outer edge of the case and not have the GPU cook an air cooler. Granted I’m not impressed by the noise of my AIO when those fans get a boogie on it sounds like a vacuum cleaner. I too would like a quieter solution. I was running a NH-U12S on my Ryzen but it was having difficulty keeping things under control. I have an air restrictive case and that in the end is the cause of my problems.
There is the argument that you shouldn’t get fixated by hitting a magical number. A particular overclock and you would be disappointed if you can’t get it or spend too much trying to achieve it.
What do you need that for?
Won’t fit because it physically blocks the first slot of the motherboard.
Its more performance and its free. and the stock clocks won’t cut the 2070 super that i have
It’s not free if you have to upgrade the thermal solution! 
I’ve got my 9900k at 4.9 GHz on a Scythe Fuma 2 (one of the myriad NH-D15 clones—great acoustic efficiency, but less horsepower at 100% speed I think). I could get it to 5.0, but the temps get a little too scary for me. With 75% the cores and 37.5% the threads…that should be more than enough for a 9600k, maybe you could manage 5.1 even (no promises).
You only need water cooling if you need the extreme performance ceiling of a 360 rad or something, or if your case has poor airflow. Otherwise, air cooling is usually a more cost-effective solution. So I would look at air cooling if I was you, unless your case has poor airflow. I bet you could do okay with sub-D15 performance—maybe the D15S or U14S? Just keep in mind, the more overkill the cooling solution, the quieter it can run under load.
There are plenty of other choices for midrange CPU coolers but it’s hard to find good data on them, which is why people tend to just recommend Noctua.
Rough. Do you need that slot though? My motherboard’s first slot lines up with my case’s second slot, which is why I didn’t have that problem, I guess. That might be more of a 140mm fan problem than a D15 problem, though.
Yes i need that for my GPU.
That’s too bad. All of Noctua’s 140mm coolers are the same width, just different heights.
The NH-U12A is their top-end 120mm air cooler, which is basically a 212 Evo with more heatpipes. It’s probably enough, but it costs more than the D15…supply and demand, I guess.
The Arctic Freezer 34 eSports DUO is priced more reasonably. But I’m just recommending it on brand-name recognition, I haven’t seen it benchmarked.
Of course, you can also use any water cooler and it will fit (that was the third reason to go with liquid over air, I forgot). But the value proposition is a lot better with a good 120mm air cooler compared to an AIO that costs 2x as much.
Actually it’s just straight quality. The U12A is pretty much as capable as the D15 in a much more compact package. A lot of that comes down to the new fans.
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Was about to say this lol. U12A uses a different finstack and everything from the U12S. They have similar names because of Noctua’s nomenclature.
D15S? Slightly cheaper due to including a single fan vs two (basically no difference in thermals other than at the very top end, and not something you’d need to worry about with a 9600K. It’s the same finstack as the D15, but with an offset for better PCIe compatability. I use one on my X58 board because that offset also lets it clear my northbridge heatsink. On some boards the PCIe slot is too close even for the D15S though, my X79 and X99 EVGA boards are like this.
Hm, I was assuming a front-to-back airflow pattern, where fan width would determine PCIe interference or not. Since the D15S has the same 140mm fan, the width is the same, only the length and height are reduced. But if the cooler is mounted sideways, for bottom-to-top airflow, then you’re no longer limited to 120mm coolers. But I still can’t say for sure if the D15S would fit in this configuration or not.
Also, yes, this is the “wrong” way to mount a heatsink—front-to-back is accepted as better for thermals. But as somebody who cluelessly built his first system this way…I don’t think the FX chip noticed. Anyway, just some more flexibility.
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