Air cooler or AIO

Drake5

Drake5

Drake5

Soldato
Joined
12 Dec 2005
Posts
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I currently have a Rajintek Themis CPU cooler. I'm overclocked to 4.4GHz on a 4690k. My idle temps are low-mid 30's and load temps are high 60's

I would like to get lower idle temps and lower load temps, would an air cooler or an AIO be the best way to go, I have pretty good air cooling in my case so I'm thinking a decent air cooler could be better than an AIO
 
I bought an h100i and wasn't really impressed with it at all. Not getting great temps with the same CPU as you, temperatures seem very erratic, drops extremely quickly when going from load to idle such as minimizing games.

Not sure if it's the CPU or cooler.

I'll look at the temps again tonight, but I'm sure they were high 70's under load. Wish I had just stuck with my noctua cooler tbh!
 
For the outlay of a good AIO, you would't see a great improvement.

£ to performance, I'd go with Air unless you go custom loop but that can build in price quite quickly
 
Just literally ordered a replacement for my Antec Kuhler H20 620. A lot of talk of the Rajintek AIO units failing has got me twitchy about my "cheap" Antec AIO unit that is now ageing to about 2/3 years.

General consensus is prolimatech, phanteks or Noctua are the way to go, for your budget a Noctua NH-D14 can be found for £55 delivered!
 
Those temps sound good, though I'm not familiar with devils canyon

Are you not satisfied with noise?
 
I dont know how relevant my experience with AIOs is but i have a g3258 running at 4.3ghz (up from 3.2ghz std) with a Corsair H100 and when folding@home or playing Dirt3 on ultra it doesnt go above 34 degrees. That is in a S340 case.
 
My 4670k @4.4 is cooled with a Noctua NH U14S. Great temps and very quiet (in a Fractal R4)

Now if Noctua made an AIO......
 
If you can find a decent (Corsair) AIO going cheap, either second hand or reconditioned, then it would be worthwhile. More so if you can add decent quiet fans (Noctua) for less overall than it would cost to get a top end air cooler.

Otherwise, air would be the better choice.
 
Honestly I would not consider a CLC. Dark Rock Pro 3 has similar cooling at full speed and much better cooling at same noise level as CLC.

Good air coolers are lower priced, perform as well, are quieter, last much longer, and have fans that can fail. CLC pumps are the most common source of problems, and if teh pump fails it means buying a complete cooling system .. and that's not cheap.
 
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