I did research before posting this question, but I would like to hear the opinions from real people. I m using a i5 4430, so no OC.
This thing is quiet as hell but has been out of stock for a long time. XIGMATEK Dark Knight II SD1283 Night Hawk Edition..
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The Noctua coolers are very quiet. There are a variety of them to suit your needs and budget. I really hate the way they look personally, the plastic on the fans in the color of poop smeared on a prosthetic limb, but they work really really well.
NOfan passive cooler. 0dB
Pretty much. The only misfortune is the relatively few cases it will actually fit into. Not to mention, you still have to have fans in your case, so it might be worthwhile just to go ahead and put a fan on a cooler. I would probably just grab a NZXT Kraken X60 and toss a couple Noctua fans on it with voltage reducers, you probably won't get better outside a custom loop.
i use a nh-d14 without fan. they only spin when they get above 60c so that's only in rendering and they spin really slow while gaming. but i think a noctua nh-d14 or the newer nh-d15 is a bit overkill. i can try an hyper 212 evo maybe today or tommorow. it's not a i5 4430 but a i7 4770k
Yup rocking a Noctua NH-D14 as well. It is almost completely silent. As pointed out the fans are pretty horrible visually but my word to they stay quiet and are very good at their job.
The only down side I have with the NH-D14 is the size of it. Truly colossal hut this equates to very good heat spreading and dissipation adding to the cool running.
Cool, quiet and ugly. Hell of a cooler.
A CPU like the i5-4430 is easy to cool, so look primarily for coolers that have fans that can wind down to really low speeds at low loads. Some coolers like Scythe Mugen 4 comes with a fan that goes down as low as 300 RPM, which makes it practically inaudible when the system is not stressed very hard. Now the motherboard certainly has a say on the end result but most today have at least some basic CPU fan profile options in the BIOS or through accompanying software.
Depending on the case and general airflow it can even be possible to remove the fan altogether off a sizeable cooler like the mentioned Mugen 4, or a Thermalright HR-02 Macho 120/140 model. The latter series of CPU coolers don't come with quite as quiet fans, but their design are more engineered for fanless operation as an option. I'm currently running an i5-3570K at 4GHz fanlessly with a HR-02 Macho(140 size), haven taken some care at regulating the case fans in some detail according to rising temperatures.
Whatever noctua that can fit in your case.
If you want to stay on the cheaper side. The Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo is pretty silent while doing everyday tasks, and quiet when under load.
IT IS POSSIBLE, to run it under load without the fan. HOWEVER, that was only possible with my delided Core i7 3770k, and even then, it was overclocked to 4.5GHz and remained around 75C. It was a happy accident since I forgot to plug the fan back in and immediately checked the temps to see how it ran and was pleasantly surprised that it was around 70C-75C.
Thermal pastes I use are coollaboratory liquid pro on the delid cpu and Arctic mx 4 on the heatsink.