Completely out of the loop on cooling. Haswell

Werewolf

Werewolf

Werewolf

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Ok, I'll admit this, despite having a look round I'm still pretty much out of the loop on cooling and I'm going to be building a Haswell system this week with luck :)

So what I'm wondering is, what coolers there are that are both quiet, and don't weigh enough to need a forklift to move them? ;)

I'm going for a 4770 of some description (probably the low power one as I have no intention of overclocking), and want a cooler that is as close to silent when the system isn't playing games etc as possible :)
At the moment the loudest thing for my current Q6600 is the external HDD when not playing games.

The most likely motherboard is the Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H

I'm stuck on what cooler to get that is fairly good (no overclocking!), quiet (important), and preferably has a fan that is easy to replace.
Relatively cheap would be good ;)
Easy to fit would be great.

I am tempted by one of the ready to use water cooling type units, but don't really want to spend £50+ on the cooler, and I'm leary of the fact they've got pumps which if they fail, the the whole unit needs replacing.
 
As your not over locking you can really go for a single fan air cooler. To make it quiet just use a 12v to 7v adapter.

Id personally take a look at these ~£30 coolers:

Matterhorn Pure: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-037-AL&groupid=701&catid=2330&subcat=2337

Silverstone AR01: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-007-SV&groupid=701&catid=2330&subcat=2351

True Spirit 120: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-107-TR&groupid=701&catid=2330&subcat=2352

Macho 120: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-102-TR&groupid=701&catid=2330&subcat=2352

Have a look read a few reveiws and let us know what you settle on. :)
 
The Z87-D3HP board is being supplied with a free BeQuiet cooler all for £110.

If you want a single gfx card motherboard it is ideal.
 
Cheers, that D3HP board with cooler is tempting as even though i'd need to buy an SATA card (I need 7 sata ports*), it would save me about 60 ony my other option which is the

Gigabyte UD3H
PPhantec PHTC12DX


*I've got a Crucial M500 240gb drive for my boot/apps drive, one ot the OCZ Vertex 2 bigfoot 480gb drive for games, a trio of spinning disks for storage, and 2 optical drive.
 
Having had a look at the manual for the D3HP board and compared the specs with the UD3H, I'm probably going to have to go with the UD3H for the extra features and a little bit of futureproofing (IE i'm not going to be tying up one of the expansions slots from the word go, with a drive controller).

Which leaves me trying to decide on the
Phantec @ £40
The Silverstone AR01
Or something else.

Definitely more reading tonight :), hopefully when I'm not half dead from doing the lawn as today the first nice day when I've got time free in a while, and had to waste it cutting the grass - the dog was getting lost in it).
 
RSRAVI said:
air cooler but from what I hear these chips run very hot
Click to expand...

Depends on the voltage...

While the clockspeeds they can reach seem to vary dramatically, the heat they pump out seems to be fairly consistent with voltage.

1.25v seems to be about the maximum for decent air cooling, 1.3v for closed-loop water units and top-end air, and anything over 1.3v will need a good custom water loop.

According to Asus, about 50% of chips will do 4.6Ghz at 1.25-1.3v, and about 10% will do 4.8Ghz.
 
I'm not planning on overclocking at all, so I'm hoping that the Noctua will do the job - it seems to be pretty reasonable in the reviews I've read.
 
you will be more than fine. the most important thing you need to consider for low noise is your case. To put this into perspective, im running a 4770K stock with a coolermaster 212 evo+ with the UD4H and its pretty much silent. Of course when you start a game things spin up but its not very loud anyway. This is all sitting in a Define R4 case with the fan controller set to medium (7V).
My CPU temperature in windows (idling basically) is 25C and ive been monitoring it obsessively since i built the system on Monday. The CPU fan stays on low throughout. Even when playing games the temps dont go above about 50C or so!

Like i said though, your case choice will have the most impact on noise
 
Aye, case wise I think I should be fine :)

I've got a P280 which with my current setup (Q6600 stock cooler, Gigabyte 7850, Seasonic G650), the external Seagate drives (a backup, and expansion one) are the loudest things by far:)
When the external drives are powered down the system is virtually silent unless I'm either gaming or doing something else CPU intensive.

Oddly the P280 seems more quiet than my old Sonata 550 was, I suspect in part it's due to the extra couple of quiet 120mm fans giving some extra airflow over the coolers without any real extra noise (and the addition of the front door that has the same sort of construction as the side panels).
 
Initial impressions with the NH-U12S are good :)
it went on pretty easily, cleared the ram (Crucial Ballistix), although if I put it set to blow the air up it wouldn't (it's a little tight, but clear in the "blow back" orientation), the instructions were easy enough to follow and it seems to be nice and quiet :)

Just running memory tests now before I start to install Windows.
 
It is almost a thing of beauty.

I can see why it costs as much as it does (I think this is the most I've ever paid for a cooler), as they've not only paid attention to the performance, but making it as easy as possible to use.
Things like putting the brackets for the Intel and AMD in separate boxes (with the instructions for Intel in the Intel box etc), then having a third for the common parts.
And as you say the packaging is really nice :)
They've made it look really good, but without going over the top.

I think the tube of thermal paste will probably last me years :p
I actually found one of the large syringes of thermal paste OCUK used to sell back in the Slot A days the other week, I didn't think it wise to hang onto it, even if it was about 95% full...
 
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