Best cooler for I5 3570k

Dirk Diggler

Dirk Diggler

Dirk Diggler

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As thread title, I've only ever used custom water set ups when clocking my hardware. What's the best air cooler I can use?

The case is a Coolermaster CM690 so I'm expecting it should fit physically?

TIA
 
is that the 3rd gen case? It can house up to 171mm tall coolers, and 2nd gen 177mm. Not sure on the original.

The best air cooler of course is the Noctua NH-D15, Phanteks TC14PE is a close contender and more pleasing to the eye as well.
 
D15 is stunning. 20C cooler than the Thermaltake I had installed when encoding with Handbrake.

Question : Is it best to have both the D15 fans pushing in the same direction towards the rear case exhaust fan?
 
Yep that is the correct way it is called push pull where one fan pushes air through the radiator and the other pulls it out and into the direction of a rear case fan.
 
Just a little bit of feedback on this cooler...

This is my PC for gaming on a 40" TV and it sits in my conservatory. Right now, the ambient is 28C. I've got my 3570k OC'd to 4.6Ghz @ 1.25v and am currently running Intel burn test. The CPU temperature is topping out at 82C.

This heatsink is stunning and it's made me think twice about water cooling.

Very highly recommended!
 
NH-D15 is no better than NH-D14 with same fans Reviews have compared the two with reference fans to prove this.

NH-D15 is a fine cooler, but no better than other top tier coolers like PH-TC14PE, R1 Ultimate & Universal, NH-D14, Silver Arrow variants, NH-U14S, Archon variants, TRUE Spirit 140 variants, etc. Several are at same cooling level while others are 2-4c warmer .. and 4c doesn't make much if any difference to the average user. Room ambient and even more importantly cooler intake air temp make much more difference.

The reason we see such a wide spread in review comparisons is because they are not monitoring the most critical temperature .. the temperature of air going into coolers while testing. Using room ambient is like looking at the thermometer in your porch to say how warm your lounge is.
 
I have always wondered about the varying temps in reviews, I never thought about it that way but mainly about the actual hardware, since the reviewers use different hardware. That statements sums it up nicely though doyll :)
 
I'm obviously not going to start measuring air intake points etc, and I haven't used all the air heatsinks available on the market. All I can say is that if I had a custom water loop in there then I'm not sure the temps would be much better.

I'm happy with my purchase.
 
String said:
I'm obviously not going to start measuring air intake points etc, and I haven't used all the air heatsinks available on the market. All I can say is that if I had a custom water loop in there then I'm not sure the temps would be much better.

I'm happy with my purchase.
Click to expand...
If you are not going to measure cooler intake air temp your data is only applicable to your your system. Same coolers in different systems perform differently largely because of different cooler intake air temps. ;)
 
dacads said:
I have always wondered about the varying temps in reviews, I never thought about it that way but mainly about the actual hardware, since the reviewers use different hardware. That statements sums it up nicely though doyll :)
Click to expand...
Granted different hardware performs differently.

It is very common to find the cooler intake air temp 8-15c different than room ambient .. and it will change by simply changing cooler and/or case and/or GPU fan speeds. Change the load on CPU and increase it's heat and fans change speed resulting in different case airflow characteristics and different cooler (and other component intake air temps.

I have convinced some reviewers to use cooler intake air temp. All found a significant different in temp. While some were 9-11c warmer than room, that difference remained pretty constant. Others changes radically when cooler fan speed was changed.

Maintaining the intake air temp can be hard to keep constant, especially if testing in a case. But even on an open bench it changes. Downflow coolers are the worst.

Few years back I was testing the Thermalright AXP-100 and tried fan pulling out of cooler instead of pushing into cooler. Found air blowing down into cooler was signicantly warmer than air pulled out of cooler .. even with the added heat it was removing from CPU.

Air blowing down through AXP-100 hits motherboard and goes out hitting the GPU, RAM, I/O housings, etc and comes back up around cooler and is sucked back in by fan. With fan pulling air out of AXP-100 goes up and away. Hopefully your case has a vent and/or fan that catches it and removes it from case. CPU is 5-7c cooler with fan pulling out of cooler.

AXP-100 w/ TY-100 pushing in
Tested with i7 920 stock
Handbrake @ realtime

Room ambient . Idle CPU; rpm; Cooler Exhaust. . 100% CPU; rpm; Cooler Exhaust . mobo; NB; Cooler intake*
21.5c . . . . . . . . . 33-34-35-31c 2400rpm 28.0c . . 67-68-67-66c 2400rpm . 39.5c . . 36c . . 51c
22.0c . . . . . . . . . 33-34-35-31c 2250rpm 28.0c . . 68-68-69-67c 2250rpm . 39.5c . . 36c . . 51c . . 30.0c
22.5c . . . . . . . . . 36-35-39-33c 2000rpm 30.0c . . 69-70-70-69c 2000rpm . 40.0c . . 39c . . 51c
22.5c . . . . . . . . . 35-34-38-33c 1750rpm 29.5c . . 72-73-73-71c 1750rpm . 43.0c . . 40c . . 54c
22.5c . . . . . . . . ; 35-35-39-34c 1500rpm 30.0c . . 76-78-77-75c 1500rpm . 47.0c . . 40c . . 57c
23.0c . . . . . . . . . 37-36-41-36c 1200rpm 31.0c; 39c & 46c mobo & NB
2400rpm is maximum rpm mounted pushing in
*Temperature of air 30mm above TY-100
:doh: I re-ran a couple of the fan pushing in tests. Intake air is much warmer than room ambient.

AXP-100 w/ TY-100 pulling out
Tested with i7 920 stock
Handbrake @ realtime

Room ambient . Idle CPU; rpm; Cooler Exhaust. . 100% CPU; rpm; Cooler Exhaust . mobo; NB; Cooler intake*
21.5c . . . . . . . . 32-31-35-31c 2450rpm 26.0c . . 62-62-63-61c 2450rpm . 33.5c . . 34c . . 46c
21.5c . . . . . . . . 33-31-35-31c 2250rpm 25.5c . . 63-64-65-63c 2250rpm . 34.5c . . 37c . . 45c
21.5c . . . . . . . . 33-32-37-33c 2000rpm 30.0c . . 64-65-65-64c 2000rpm . 35.5c . . 34c . . 48c
21.5c . . . . . . . . 35-34-39-34c 1750rpm 28.5c . . 66-67-66-65c 1750rpm . 37.5c . . 35c . . 50c
21.5c . . . . . . . . 34-33-38-32c 1500rpm 27.0c . . 69-70-70-69c 1500rpm . 39.5c . . 34c . . 51c
21.0c . . . . . . . . 35-34-38-33c 1200rpm 28.0c; 34c & 47c mobo & NB
*I neglected to put a probe under cooler, sorry.
. 2450rpm is maximum rpm mounted pulling out

Running TY-100 pushing in again and finding the heat difference is because of air temperature over cooler / fan intake. Idling at 2400rpm the air 30mm above AXP-100 is 28.5c with 22c ambient. That's with a TY-140 40cm away and 15cm above work top blowing 22c ambient over test setup.
 
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