im currently in need of an aftermarket cooler. I purchased an i7 3770k and figured it save some cash in the build and upgrade cooling in a few weeks. the time has come and i never realized my cpu would reach 100C with this cooler. ive been forced to keep my cpu bellow 50% due to being devastated by these temps!
Im looking at the corsair h80i and its $84 on newegg.com. its about the same price for a nice noctua cooler. my issue is the size and weight of the noctuas. i know they are silent but how good are these liquid coolers? I know custom loops dominate but im not sure if ill go that rout. I just really want something silent.. as silent as possible. should i go noctua, h80i or maybe h100i? or is it worth the cash to go full custom loop?
I have a H80i and its it's loud (even in silent mode) and cooling wise its not realy anybetter than a cheap $30 cooler master hyper 212 evo.
The noctuas are worth every penny you pay for them quiet and great cooling.
Noctua hands down,
These prebuild liquid coolers would have made sense 15 years ago when Airflow in computer cases was crap, air-coolers didn't have heat-pipes and 6-8cm fans spinning at 4000rpm.
The only liquid-cooling that that makes sense is when you want extremely high power components in a tiny case, or if you build one of those monster beyond all reason gaming systems with an i7 hexacore and 3 dual gpu's.
Air cooling or go all out on a custom loop.
The performance given by a AIO is pretty bad considering their price. I only find them useful when you are putting them in smaller case such as mITX.
For around the same price of a H80i if not cheaper the NH-D14 well out perform it. If you don't have low profile ram i would go for something like the NH-U12s or the Dark Night. These two coolers will give you some room for overclocking and it will perform as good as most AIO coolers.
I have a H90 and love it, cools plenty good enough for my I7 4770K in a Fractal design Define R4, even when running as an exhaust and with the top and side covers on, best bit is its fairly quiet when doing so. I when this way due to a good special price and the fact I don't really like having 1kg+ of metal hanging off my motherboard, nor like having fans running that vent heat back inside my case to heat up my chipset, VRM's ect which are all far more temperature sensitive than the CPU itself.
(edit, for reference the Sorsair H55quiet, H90 and H110 are quieter, the H80i and H100i pack as almost as good a cooling as the h90 and h110 into a smaller, louder package more likely to fit in most cases, they also throw in corsair link compatibility if you want to spend $100 for features normally already included in either your mobo or a $50 5.25" digital fan controller.
Really if your willing to spend the money the H90 does work really well, but I have used a couple of air-coolers (including a noctua u14s, super quiet but 140mm wide can sometimes make it a pain to mount) that worked well enough if you don't mind having either more fans or hotter case temps. So really your choice, bang for buck a cheap air-cooler like the hyper212evo can't be beaten, but good AIO coolers have several advantages that I personally feel make them worth every dollar, just avoid the really cheap ones (eg: seldion 120v) or you may have issues.
As for custom loop, either do it for the fun of it or not at all... its to much time and money to be a cooler, its a project in its own right. Having said that, if you do go custom loop you can get lower temperatures, noise and a cool looking setup, its just going to take up half of the room in your case, wallet and free time to make it happen.