Unsure about CPU air cooler

Angilion

Angilion

Angilion

Man of Honour
Joined
5 Dec 2003
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21,063
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Just to the left of my PC
i7-4790K on a Gigabyte Z87-D3HP.

I've looked at a photo on Gigabyte's website, measured the distance between mounting holes (i.e. a fixed and known size) to find the scale and come up with these clearances: CPU centre to PCI-E edge 95mm and CPU centre to 1st RAM slot edge 56mm. I'll only be using the 2nd and 4th slots from the CPU socket, anyway (which are labelled as slots 2 and 1 on the board).

I have a big case for it, with 194mm CPU cooler clearance, so height isn't a problem.

I'm undecided on the cooler. I will be overclocking and I want low noise and my sensible budget is up to ~£60. That gives me a lot of choices.

I've currently pencilled in a Thermalright True Spirit 140 Power (£59) or a Noctua NH-D14 (£57) but I've just seen suprisingly good review results for a Thermalright Silver Arrow ITX, which I can buy for only £36. None of them on OcUK, unfortunately.

This is the last bit of my new build that I'm not sure about. So many choices.
 
Depending how rough you want to get with overclocking, a bog standard Coolermaster 412S will probably work just as well. I used to clock my 8320 to within an inch of its life on occasion and the temps rarely went above 55-58c even under full load.

I personally don't think there's such a big difference between the different manufacturers in terms of what it's supposed to be doing. Obviously they differentiate themselves by adding fancy LED lights or making them better looking but in essence I don't think the actual difference is all that big.

If it's 60 bucks you want to spend then I know the Noctua gets a good write up everywhere.

I went through the same exercise 2 weeks ago when I was angling for a 6700k. I was going to use my Coolermaster in the mean time until I could get a Noctua in stock here in NZ but would've probably just stuck with the Coolermaster in the end.
 
I finally ended my dithering upgraditis, so I had to make a choice quickly. I went with the Thermalright True Spirit 140 Power (is there a contest for the longest name for a cooler?) because of noise levels. The price had dropped, too.

I decided to push the boat out a bit for low noise. At low load (i.e. everything apart from gaming), my new PC will hopefully be quieter to me than my own breathing. PSU is completely silent up to 50% load in normal thermal conditions. Not cheap, but worth it. The CPU cooler goes down to 19 dB at low load. I'm using my current graphics card, which I know I can't hear at all at the fan speed I use for low load. The only unknown is the case fans, which is a 140mm Phantek (I bought the Enthoo Pro M case) and maybe one of a few fans I have in my parts box if it turns out that I need an intake fan as well as an exhaust fan. Should be fine.

A decent cooler would have done the job well at a reasonable noise level for half the price (the new Hyper 212X looks like a very good buy, for example), but paying £25 extra for better cooling and less noise seemed worth it to me. It's a few quid per decibel compared with a good £30 cooler.

I even went to the extent of paying £5 for 1g of the best thermal paste I could find because why not? I haven't upgraded for years (I'm still on Socket 775) and I'm spending money I've saved, so I may as well spend a bit extra. It's not much considered over the amount of time I'll probably be using the PC for. Probably only about £150 a year. Cheap hobby, really.
 
since this is done i have the same motherboard and a 4770k in a zalman z11 i know i can fit the noctua 14/15 but can i fit the be quiet dark rock pro 3 just for aethstetics
?
 
Alpenföhn Matterhorn Pure is what I've been using with my i7 4790K and it's never let me down. It's pretty quiet and always keeps the temps in check. My CPU never really goes above 60C even after hours of gaming!

I can't use memory with tall heat spreaders in the first memory slot though, but it doesn't matter as I use Kingston HyperX Fury memory which fits just fine.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/alpenfoehn-matterhorn-pure-edition-cpu-cooler-hs-037-al.html
 
Last edited:
Angilion said:
I finally ended my dithering upgraditis, so I had to make a choice quickly. I went with the Thermalright True Spirit 140 Power (is there a contest for the longest name for a cooler?) because of noise levels. The price had dropped, too.

I decided to push the boat out a bit for low noise. At low load (i.e. everything apart from gaming), my new PC will hopefully be quieter to me than my own breathing. PSU is completely silent up to 50% load in normal thermal conditions. Not cheap, but worth it. The CPU cooler goes down to 19 dB at low load. I'm using my current graphics card, which I know I can't hear at all at the fan speed I use for low load. The only unknown is the case fans, which is a 140mm Phantek (I bought the Enthoo Pro M case) and maybe one of a few fans I have in my parts box if it turns out that I need an intake fan as well as an exhaust fan. Should be fine.

A decent cooler would have done the job well at a reasonable noise level for half the price (the new Hyper 212X looks like a very good buy, for example), but paying £25 extra for better cooling and less noise seemed worth it to me. It's a few quid per decibel compared with a good £30 cooler.

I even went to the extent of paying £5 for 1g of the best thermal paste I could find because why not? I haven't upgraded for years (I'm still on Socket 775) and I'm spending money I've saved, so I may as well spend a bit extra. It's not much considered over the amount of time I'll probably be using the PC for. Probably only about £150 a year. Cheap hobby, really.
Click to expand...
You won't regret getting the True Spirit 140 Power. In testing against NH-D14 with TY-143 fan/s at 1200 & 2500rpm it was 8-9c better cooling on i7 920 @ 4.2GHz
TS140PTY-143graph_zps35d445d0.jpg
 
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