What is the best cooling option for a Haswell 4770K within a Micro ATX build?

sastusbulbas

sastusbulbas

sastusbulbas

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Hi all,

I will be looking for a decent cooling set up for the MicroATX build below, not sure what has been tested and found to work best for Haswell.
But I do have a couple of queries.

As I want to use the HDD cage on this case, I believe large air coolers will be a last resort, at a stretch I can place the HDD and SSD elsewhere, but it compromises GPU support and future storage.

As such I was thinking of an all in one water cooler of the 120mm fan type, fitting to the rear of the case, but wonder if there are any compatibility issues known? And will the mPCIe Combo II expansion slot be compromised?

Any suggestions would be great, even if it is just known coolers that are currently superb with Haswell.

A full water cooled custom loop will be out of the question for now. When I can drop the optic drives and change current storage requirements it may be a future possibility.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £275.99
1 x MSI HD 7950 Twin Frozr III Boost Edition 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **NEW REVISION** £239.99
1 x Samsung 256GB SSD 840 PRO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7PD256BW) £193.99
1 x Asus Z87 MAXIMUS VI GENE Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £169.99
1 x Hitachi Deskstar 7K4000 4TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 7200RPM - OEM (0S03356) HDD £163.99
1 x Seasonic X-Series 650w '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £119.99
1 x Silverstone TemJin TJ08B-E Midi Tower Case - Black (SST-TJ08B-E USB 3.0) £83.99
1 x Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C10 2400MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (PV38G240C0K) £73.99
1 x LG CH10LS28 BD-ROM 10x BluRay ROM / DVDRW SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (Retail) £63.98
Total : £1,407.32 (includes shipping : £17.85).
 
I love that case, i have one myself. :)

Yes, using the HDD cage will limit you're CPU cooler. You can still use Big coolers like the D14, but you'd have to put the front fan on the back.. and do some neat cabling with the HDD's.

I can also see that mPCI-e combo getting in the way of any cooler..

Maybe this is isn't for this motherboard, which is a shame.

Have you considered the 350D, You'll be able to put a H100 in the roof of that, no issues and will have loads of HDD space.
 
Cheers Doomedspeed you may well be right.

The 350D is larger with only two HDD mounts, currently I am unsure what I am doing regarding storage etc. As I have two TJ08B-E cases, I thought it would be the better smaller cheaper option, maybe your right though, if I do not find what I want with this, the H100i or similar in a larger 350D may well be a second option.

I had thought of that mPCIe Combo slot as a possible wireless option if I ever crossfire, guess I could unplug it.

The parts are here, I just need to get time to put some of it together within the TJo8B-E sans cooler and see what room I have I guess.
 
I know you're against watercooling - but a 180mm radiator would fit so nicely in the front, where the hard drive cage currently is. Google images confirms. I know not everyone is willing to sacrifice all their optical and hard drive bays for radiators. It's a good way to go though.

My case had space for four optical drives and seven hard drives. The optical bays are filled with a radiator. Five out of the seven hard drive bays are now radiator. The other two were pump for a while, but that was a logistical problem. These days you can get along just fine with no drive bays! An ssd screwed/velcro'd into a tiny space and you're good to go.

Worth thinking about. I think I've used an optical drive once in the last decade.
 
Hi JonJ,

Yeah I had considered such in a previous build, I had at one point planned a XSPC D5 Dual Bay Reservoir/Pump Combo V2 (though I had heard of noise issues), with an XSPC RayStorm CPU WaterBlock, and either a rear mounted XSPC AX120 Single Fan Rad, or front mounted Phobya 35185 Xtreme 200 Rad. If I was not using any optic drives or HDD's. Sadly I have no ETA on when I will be free of requiring such trivial media items.
 
Optical drives - you can get a long way with Daemon tools, USB sticks and steam. Hard drives are harder to get rid of - I've put them in another computer. Not strictly saving space, but it's convenient for network sharing and backups.

If you are ever tempted, the only tricky bit is finding space for radiators. Everything else is smaller than air cooling so fits just fine.
 
Ordering a Noctua NH-U14S cooler after finding not one comparative conclusive Haswell recommended cooler review.

I had intended on a H80i style cooler, as apparently they come close in some set ups to the H100i. But I was using a compact TJ08B-E case.
But was rather disappointed at the amount noise some experience, complaints, and the huge variations in temp claims in comparison to quieter more efficient value for money air coolers.

I guess Haswell cooler reviews are pointless though, many air coolers are close to the performance of 220 rad ClC's yet offer less noise and wires. But there is no consistency in Haswell CPU temps due to the appalling Intel build quality. Some chips seem to run cooler than others.

It looks like the Noctua I have ordered will allow me to use any height of Ram, and maintain access to the HDD bay. It also has the bonus of being far quieter than any CLC, and I can add another fan later to the cooler, and also to the rear of the case.

I guess this will do me for a while, if there is any extensive reviews or new coolers that come highly recommended for Haswell that do turn up, I can upgrade in future.
 
Is a parvum case out of the question? I know a little pricier but stunning kit id be tempted to do a build in one just to use one of there cases
 
For what it's worth, you didn't need to look at "haswell" cooler reviews. A heatsink performance is dependent on the cpu wattage, the interface between cpu and heatsink, and the heatsink itself. An 80W haswell or an 80W ivy bridge doesn't matter - the heatsink only cares about the wattage.

It's somewhat dishonest that reviews invariably focus on cpu temperatures. That's not what you need to choose a heatsink. It's the temperature rise per watt transferred - "C/W" or "K/W" figure. It's harder to find the C/W rating than to ask hwmonitor what the cpu temperature is.

Your noctua looks like an incremental change to the legendary thermalright ultra 120 extreme, so it'll perform fine. The potential problem with tower coolers is increased motherboard temperatures - airflow blows across the board, instead of down onto the socket. The heatsinks on chipset and mosfets benefit from air being blown down onto the cpu, so tend to do a bit better with top-down cpu fans.
 
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