Been out of the loop and need a little help.

deviation · Wednesday at 01:05

tamzzy said:
i've personally used the thermalright AIOs for the last year or so, until a computer reorganisation meant the 360mm rad no longer fits
personally had no issues with pump, fans nor fan noise

Nice, I did think it was a bit strange when it came to noise, as the fans on the Air coolers are hardly 'loud' but under load they can be, so I wondered if they were using cheaper louder fans on the AIO's.
Good to know though, as I do like them, so would consider one in the future, but Arctic is absolutely killing it currently and there's not much in the price considering how cheap the Arctic's are currently versus the usual suspects OTT pricing.

pastymuncher · Wednesday at 10:56

tamzzy said:
i've personally used the thermalright AIOs for the last year or so, until a computer reorganisation meant the 360mm rad no longer fits
personally had no issues with pump, fans nor fan noise

Ditto, the wife has my old Thermalright Frozen Edge 240mm AIO in her pc and I have a Thermalright Frozen Vision 360mm in mine, both are running the fans they came with and they are brilliant with zero problems. Any cooler be it air or AIO will make a load of noise when the fans ramp up to full, the trick is to prevent that from ever happening by trading off temps for silence. Both my wifes pc and my own are running all fans on the motherboards bios silent profile and they hardly ever spin up. The wifes 5600x maxxes out in the mid 50's ℃ while my 7800x3d hits the mid-high 60's ℃. I have set both pumps to run at 2700rpm and there is no pump noise at all. The noisest thing in my pc is the gpu when the fans start up although it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be thanks to me changing the pads/paste and fitting a rather large heatsink to the metal backplate.

Craig_d1 · Wednesday at 11:24

that was the other review i saw, where you can see gaming temps at 9mins 50, and again, coming in last...interesting they have a couple that were used in the other test, and same they had the lian li come top (the GA 2 lite). Will be interesting to see if they have conquered their reliability. 2nd in their test below is the thermalright warframe i see

both reviews say the same thing though, all these aio are more than up to the job...it just where 5 years ago the freezer III was ahead, the competition has caught up, and with cheaper aio's out there, arctic can't claim the budget crown either anymore

though tbf, you don't need to have a 360mm aio to keep an x3d cpu cool. I've got a 360mm corsair aio i bought 2nd hand from a pc being stripped out for it's gpu during the crypto boom, which is 5yrs old cooling a 5800x, and hasn't put a foot wrong as is quiet as anything
but my 7800x3d is cooled with an arctic a35 argb air cooler, and my 9800x3d with an arctic a36 freezer argb air cooler. both quiet and have zero issues. with these cpu, you basically choose a 360mm rad for the looks. you're not going get any more performance out of the cpu seeing as a standard air cooling is more than enough and you'll never get to the point of thermally throttling the cpu

I'm tempted to put in the lian li 360mm in my rig as have sl inf fans, just as am a bit bored and want to tinker. think i might go for it and see how reliability is..either that or was looking at the thermalright vision as 3.5" screen for just over £100 (only £20 more than the warframe here, and screen size diff is worth price diff I think). @tamzzy how's the software for displaying on the warframe lcd screen?

Craig_d1 · Wednesday at 11:30

other thing of course is space...my am4 is in a 5000x case, and there's no way I could get a freezer aio in the top..he extra thickness of the rad, and now the fans would interfere with the top vrv heatsink...just with the corsair aio in there (standard size), there's only a couple min clearance...so whatever someone chooses, check whether it can fit

Gray2233 · Wednesday at 12:06

Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB Review

Arctic is expanding its AIO liquid cooler collection with the Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 A-RGB. The cooler boasts a wider RPM range for its radiator fans, A-RGB lighting, and a proven high-performance design. You could say they took an already excellent product and made it better!

www.techpowerup.com

Great coolers, sometimes....

Not all good news sadly.....

overclock3d.net

Generally speaking, from the vast majority of the Freezer III Pro reviews I've seen has placed it up at the top of the stack. It's not the quietest out of the box, but setting a fan curve gets it pretty close. It's not the absolute coolest of the AiO's, but it's within 2-3% at most of AiO's costing 2-3 times as much money, and in some cases that have more questionable build quality in my opinion.

Regardless, unless you're running a 9950X3D at full pelt for non-gaming related thread heavy workloads you're buying an AiO with a X3D for aesthetics and a cheap £50 Thermalright model will do just fine. A £20-30 air cooler will be fine even, they don't run all that hot for their intended purposes.

tamzzy · Wednesday at 12:42

Craig_d1 said:
I'm tempted to put in the lian li 360mm in my rig as have sl inf fans, just as am a bit bored and want to tinker. think i might go for it and see how reliability is..either that or was looking at the thermalright vision as 3.5" screen for just over £100 (only £20 more than the warframe here, and screen size diff is worth price diff I think). @tamzzy how's the software for displaying on the warframe lcd screen?

unfortunately i don't own these snazzy things :cry:

mine is the frozen prism

pastymuncher · Wednesday at 15:19

Software is basic but fine, set it up once and forget about it. On mine (Frozen Vision 360mm which was a MM bargain at £37!!) you can choose from a selection of info what to have displayed but it depends on which of the ten images you choose. Time and date is on all of them but the image I chose lets me pick three different data points from a total of 20 so I have gpu temp, cpu temp and cpu load. You can also use your own photo or video clip by making a custom theme. It's a brilliant cooler and for the screen size normally £84 (shop around) is a cracking price compared to the competition.

As far as I can figure out there are eight models in the "Vision" series:-

Elite Vision 360mm - Usually the cheapest, 2.73" IPS display 320x320 res, £74.
Mjolnir Vision 360mm - On offer now, 3.5" IPS display 340x240 res, £67.
Frozen Vision 360mm - Also on offer now, 2.88" IPS Display 484x480 res £68.
Stream Vision 360mm - 3.5" IPS display 640x480 res, £104.
Grand Vision 360mm - 3.4" IPS display 480x480 res, £116.
Hyper Vision 360mm - 3.95" IPS display 484x480 res, £127.
Trofeo Vision 360 - 6.86" widescreen IPS display 1280x480 res, £137.
Wonder Vision 360mm - 6.67" widescreen curved IPS display 2400x1080 res, £185.

Only my one (Frozen Vision) uses the TR Vision software, all the rest uses the TRCC software which has a much wider choice of themes etc.

Russ holmes · Wednesday at 20:53

Hi everyone. Thanks for everyone's input. I'm still playing about trying to squeeze the budget.
I've made peace with choices for
CPU, GPU, Case and cooling.

Ram im ok with the Corsair , just not sure I've picked the correct speed.

PSU. I can't find another white one in price range, I'm sure it will do the job. Doesn't seem to have many ports though so hopefully it's got enough.

Storage. I've done the amature thing of picking a name I recognised at a price that suggests it's a good one.
What do people advise. Go with the 2tb Samsung. Or get a cheaper 2tb and add another 1tb.
Once I've pinned that down. It's time to click the order button.

Tetras · Wednesday at 21:25

Russ holmes said:
Storage. I've done the amature thing of picking a name I recognised at a price that suggests it's a good one.
What do people advise. Go with the 2tb Samsung. Or get a cheaper 2tb and add another 1tb.
Once I've pinned that down. It's time to click the order button.

Which drive is it specifically and how much are you paying? I'd say any high-end PCI-E 4.0 drive needs to be around £130 to make sense, though the prices are creeping upwards. Gigabyte's 7300 was one of the best priced lately.

When you get into £150+ territory, I'm starting to think "eh, well, I don't need PCI-E 5.0, but...".

Russ holmes · Wednesday at 21:35

Tetras said:
Which drive is it specifically and how much are you paying? I'd say any high-end PCI-E 4.0 drive needs to be around £130 to make sense, though the prices are creeping upwards. Gigabyte's 7300 was one of the best priced lately.

When you get into £150+ territory, I'm starting to think "eh, well, I don't need PCI-E 5.0, but...".

I've looked at this one

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/samsung-990-pro-2tb-m.2-2280-pcie-4.0-x4-nvme-1.3c-solid-state-drive-hd-24r-sa.html

Or

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/wd-black-sn850x-2tb-ssd-m.2-2280-nvme-pcie-4.0-solid-state-drive-wds200t2x-hd-591-wd.html

I'm thinking for £150isg I could maybe get a 1tb and a 2tb cheaper ones.
Or is it better to get one decent brand 2tb and add later if required

Nabinium · Wednesday at 21:57

I bought and use the 2TB WD Black drive you've linked. It's been priced at that £145 mark for a while now. Though historically, it has been cheaper around Black Friday, particularly last year when it got down to around £120.

It depends on your use case really, but it sounds like your son will primarily be using the PC for gaming. I'd buy the WD Black 2TB for £145 and add SATA SSDs later if required. SATA SSDs are less restrictive and most importantly have larger capacities, which is likely to be necessary for game storage.

Gray2233 · Wednesday at 22:17

Nabinium said:
SATA SSDs are less restrictive and most importantly have larger capacities, which is likely to be necessary for game storage.

This isn't really correct.

A SATA SSD will often have the same capacity at the same or similar size in storage terms to an NvME, they're all SSD's. To add, a SATA SSD is roughly 2.5" slimline in size so yes in many cases it's easy to add for storage even now whereas larger HDD's might be impossible, but even some modern cases lack mounts for them in favour of M.2 motherboard slots.

I think where your problem is coming from is that SATA drives can have higher capacity, certainly for less cost, but we're talking HDD's (aka hard disc drives) rather than anything solid state.

Nabinium · Wednesday at 22:33

Gray2233 said:
This isn't really correct.

A SATA SSD will often have the same capacity at the same or similar size in storage terms to an NvME, they're all SSD's. To add, a SATA SSD is roughly 2.5" slimline in size so yes in many cases it's easy to add for storage even now whereas larger HDD's might be impossible, but even some modern cases lack mounts for them in favour of M.2 motherboard slots.

I think where your problem is coming from is that SATA drives can have higher capacity, certainly for less cost, but we're talking HDD's rather than anything solid state.

Yeah thinking about it, you're correct, NvME is mostly similar. I think I wanted to highlight more to the OP to prioritise the value for gaming storage if on a budget, i.e. buying higher capacity for less cost.

Gray2233 · Wednesday at 22:39

Nabinium said:
Yeah thinking about it, you're correct, NvME is mostly similar. I think I wanted to highlight more to the OP to prioritise the value for gaming storage if on a budget, i.e. buying higher capacity for less cost.

M.2 slots are the interface used by NvME drives, said drives access PCI-E lanes to transfer data which allows for speed of transfer (depends on gen, but we're talking thousands of MB/s). That said, you can also get SATA based M.2 slots which are restricted to SATA speeds, which are usually between 400-600 MB/s. Some NvME's will not work with older M.2 slots whatsoever because they've no access to PCI-E lanes.

NvME's are inherently SSD/Solid State Drives.

SATA can be either lower speed SSD's or HDD/Hard Disc Drives, the latter of which is still commonly used for backup purposes simply due to the cost per dollar/gbp for sheer storage capacity.

I think you might be employing a little AI to get back up to date, nothing wrong with that just don't use it as gospel bud.

Nabinium · Wednesday at 23:25

Gray2233 said:
M.2 slots are the interface used by NvME drives, said drives access PCI-E lanes to transfer data which allows for speed of transfer (depends on gen, but we're talking thousands of MB/s). That said, you can also get SATA based M.2 slots which are restricted to SATA speeds, which are usually between 400-600 MB/s. Some NvME's will not work with older M.2 slots whatsoever because they've no access to PCI-E lanes.

When I mentioned restrictions, it was more about the possibility of slots sharing bandwidth on various motherboards. Not saying it was the case in all scenarios.

Gray2233 said:
SATA can be either lower speed SSD's or HDD/Hard Disc Drives, the latter of which is still commonly used for backup purposes simply due to the cost per dollar/gbp for sheer storage capacity.

Yup, I know, it's why I've got a 5TB external HDD for backup storage.

Gray2233 said:
I think you might be employing a little AI to get back up to date, nothing wrong with that just don't use it as gospel bud.

Not at all, my info comes from videos/other people I sought advice from when I recently upgraded my PC. I don't trust AI to come up with accurate information, even for a basic maths sum, and I know that for a fact when some colleagues failed to use it for extravagant projects at work...

Gray2233 · Wednesday at 23:27

Nabinium said:
Not at all, my info comes from videos/other people I sought advice from when I recently upgraded my PC. I don't trust AI to come up with accurate information, even for a basic maths sum, and I know that for a fact when some colleagues failed to use it for extravagant projects at work...

Try using it, but check sources.

The best search engine on the internet right now that's readily available is ChatGPT as long as you actually double check the sources. It's not even close, Google uses AI filtered results but worse and heavily filtered as do other outlets like Bing. Nothing wrong with a bit of AI when used in a healthy manner, at least vs the absolute mess of current mainstream systems.

You've my condolences if your colleagues are just using that stuff as gospel while coasting.

Nabinium · Wednesday at 23:32

Gray2233 said:
Try using it, but check sources.

The best search engine on the internet right now that's readily available is ChatGPT as long as you actually double check the sources. It's not even close, Google uses AI filtered results but worse and heavily filtered as do other outlets like Bing. Nothing wrong with a bit of AI when used in a healthy manner, at least vs the absolute mess of current mainstream systems.

Yup, it is useful as a tool. I know some people have a tendency to use it as gospel as you were saying. I've noticed Google's AI filter sometimes comes up with some very wild results.

Gray2233 · Wednesday at 23:37

Nabinium said:
Yup, it is useful as a tool. I know some people have a tendency to use it as gospel as you were saying. I've noticed Google's AI filter sometimes comes up with some very wild results.

A lot of AI bots will bypass the standard search filters (and worse advertising) from the big search engines, they also bypass any bans a country might have while deep diving the (lol) dark web and offer sources for the question.

They're grand to use if you need to search for information, but anyone blindly using the results is going to have a big issue sooner or later if they're using it for work.

Craig_d1 · 2025-10-16T11:33:45+0100

if buying from ocuk at mo, I'd chose either of these if I wanted a higher end m.2 as my main drive...they're both at the limit of pcie4. I use a sn850x 2tb as main drive, but bought that awhile ago, i wouldn't pay £145 for it with others available cheaper below ..actually had a spare which i used for a newer build, though also bought a 4tb lexar nm790 for £200 for my games drive (which just checked you can still get for that price)...actually doing another build atm using the 2tb version of the nm790 for main drive as managed to pick it up sub £100

My basket at OcUK:

1 x Gigabyte Aorus 7300 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-GIG-05732) = £119.99
1 x Crucial T500 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01090) = £131.99

Total: £251.98 (includes delivery: £0.00)

Russ holmes · 2025-10-16T20:26:47+0100

Sorry back for more advise. I'm still undecided.
What would we be missing getting b650 instead of b850. Most reviews say. Not much. I've picked these out.. are the 850 worth the extra.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigabyte-b850-aorus-elite-wifi7-ice-socket-am5-ddr5-atx-motherboard-mot-gig-03857.html

Asus ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard

Order Asus ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asrock-b850-steel-legend-wifi-socket-am5-ddr5-atx-motherboard-mot-asr-03999.html

Sorry for dragging this thread on. He's using his savings. he wasn't saving for a PC. Just unfortunate his broke. So I want to get it right for him. Keep him on budget but try get best he can afford.
Thannks