Recommend me a cheap Skt2011 compatible cooler, able to handle some OC

Alexrose1uk · 1 Oct 2021 at 13:03

Hey guys,

Currently building a 'blast from the past' socket 2011 build, based around a 5930K/X99 platform, as a cheap upgrade unit planned for a friend (Mike, if you read this - thank you!).

Given the socket is now relatively old; albeit still capable (it's not that far behind a Ryzen 2600/3600 in games or productivity, just more power hungry), I have noticed a lot of newer coolers no longer support the socket out the box. Not really surprising given the age.

I am trying to keep my investment in this build reasonable, so I have already semi settled on a BitFenix Nova Mesh SE case, which seems pretty reasonable for the price ~£35, however where I am struggling a little more is the cooler (and PSU); especially as many of the cheap coolers do not seem to support the platform, and many others, like the Hyper 212 have gone up in price in recent months.

My fallback option was the Coolermaster MasterLiquid Lite 240 AIO at £57, which I figure might have enough gumph to handle the unit being set up with an overclock of 4.2-4.5GHz, as a more or less fire and forget solution; however realistically that's more than I had wanted to spend on the cooling for the build, and many of the cooling suggestions I can find from back when this platform was more active are no longer available, or have been replaced.

I keep also hearing that the Hyper 212, at £33, whilst popular is not really all that great any more, and probably wouldn't have the headroom to cool such a chunky CPU with a half decent OC.

Anyone got any good suggestions that straddles a nice price

erformance line, which some decent cooling, but at a more budget friendly price point?

I figure this is a good place to ask as I remember the 5930K being pretty popular here during the day; so a good few of you may well have very direct experience with the chip

Alexrose1uk · 1 Oct 2021 at 16:50

OK that is great. Thank you for the tips.
I did manage to find a 240MM Frostflow AIO that would fit, and is on offer, and priced closer to the air cooling, so that is now on my radar as a higher priced option to save a few squidoons. I'll take a look at the Arctic as well.
I'm starting to err towards spending the money on the AIO as well, simply for noise/heat even if I leave it at stock, especially now the price is coming more into parity.

Thank you both for the advice.

Alexrose1uk · 1 Oct 2021 at 23:57

Hey there
Thanks again!

I had planned to try and do a test fire in the next couple of days; I also saw that not only was the NVME-PCI-E adaptor in the box, so was the 'NVME cradle' is also in the box, that is apparently meant to be attached around the connector on the right hand side of the board to stabilise it, rather than it 'hanging free'. Would likely just put something a small 250/500GB on that. Nothing fancy at this point

but would be faster than a SATA drive; and I suspect as it has NVME onboard; it can boot from it.
I have a Xeon Haswell in my personal rig, which responded well to undervolting, so I was also considering trying that out. I suspect if I can keep the voltages down, the heat should be more manageable, both on the VRMs and the CPU itself.

The Bitfenix Mesh/AIO combo would have essentially 4 total case fans (inc the rad fans) so that is a very tempting setup and would help move air over the VRMs

And yes, needing a PSU that is capable enough (the only things I have around are too low voltage for me to consider using them for any more than boot up), last thing I was going to do was turn round and ask you if you had a spare when you'd already been so generous!

Alexrose1uk · 2 Oct 2021 at 12:09

Well the good news is I was able to test this AM and get it briefly into BIOS before CPU over temp kicked in (I didnt have a heatsink that could fit her properly so had resorted to an older i5/i7 heatsink turned upside down to try and get SOME contact), so was hitting mid to high 80s just idle in bios.

At least we know it's booting.

Alexrose1uk · 4 Oct 2021 at 19:56

Yeah, aware they're not as good as the high end AIOs/Air coolers (Dropped the Coolermaster idea as apparently that has leak issues), ID Cooling uses an Aluminium rad which is a pain but as it's self contained, and so did the CM which has good performance ratings for the money, not sure how much of an issue it'll really be; but thinking the 240mm AIO may well still be better for sustained heat load than a more midrange air cooler like the Arctic Cooler 34.

Leaning towards either the 34 (or the 34 Esports for aslightly more as I will be buying after TWO has expired, and apparently the 34 Esports handles higher heat output a bit better, rated up to 200W so may allow a little OC on the 5930K) or spend the extra on the AIO. The reviews I found placed the 34 Esports (single fan) as decently better than the Hyper212, so as the Hyper 212 is more expensive than both, Arctic seems a good direction to go (and admittedly they've never let me down in the past when I used them in years gone by).
Arctic also tend to be fairly decent on noise.

If anyone else has any good suggestions, am all ears. Realistically not wanting to spend £50+ on this, but also realistically trying to bear in mind its a 150W HEDT chip, not a 50-100W consumer chip!

By the time I'm looking at £40-50 on an air cooler; I start to feel I should be looking at an AIO, if nothing else than for neatness in the case

Alexrose1uk · 5 Oct 2021 at 21:49

Saw a Hardware Canucks review which included the Arctic 34 Esports; and also the ID Cooling SE-224XT. Basically they were neck and neck, up until the Artic's fan couldn't ramp further; whereas the ID Cooling's fan could go faster and louder; and actually managed to knock another 4-5 degrees off the temps of a 150W load, albeit at the price of higher noise.

For a cooler costing around £25 that's damned impressive so I might go with that if I go with a cheap cooler; if I spend more I'll probably be looking at a Scythe Mugen Rev B, or the ID Cooling Frostflow X 240mm AIO; as it doesnt suffer with the leaking issues the Coolermaster does; and seems to perform about as well as any other single width AIO 240MM, only dependent on the performance and noise of the fans.

At £50 compared to some of the other same sized and similarly performing rads being about double that...

Choices choices...