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Water or Air cooling?

Hey guys! So I have an FX8520. Should I water cool or air cool with the cooler master 212 EVO? This is my first build this might be a stupid question...but I'm not sure. haha Thanks guys!

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If this is your first build, the Hyper Evo will suite you just fine. You really only need watercooling if you are an experienced overclocker.
 

GL with the build :)

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Whats your budget?

If you only want to spend $30 on a cooler the 212 evo will be enough.

If you want to overclock to the max, then you're going to need to spend $100-150 on an AiO watercooler.

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Could I overclock a little bit with the EVO?

Definitely, quite a bit actually. It's an extremely good overclocker for the price.

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Keep It Simple (KIS) for your first build and then when opportunities present

themselves, then research the benefits of upgrading your cooling solution.

 

do you want to water cool, only if your budget can allow it. should you water cool,

no, not at this time.

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The 212 evo is quite a bit better than most people give it credit for.  You'll probably see numbers rivaling corsairs H60 with the stock fan.  You should be able to OC a reasonable amount.

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Do you mean the FX8350? Not heard of the 8520? As for air or water, the 212 isn't enough to Overclock this processor very far, you might gain a few 100mhz to possibly 4.4 -/+ 100mhz before you hit your thermal limit, while these chips do OC very well, as soon as you pump more Volts into the Vcore that chip will heat up like you wouldn't believe. I can heat my room with mine at 4.9GHz stable @ 1.536 idle and 1.560 load, I have a 240 rad and a 120 and my coolant starts to get very warm. I struggled to keep it cool with my Phanteks 14pe (forgot the model number) on air it simply got far too warm. 

 

I've seen people hit 4.6 with the 212 and then it would fail every stability test because they either shut down through thermal limit or starved the chip of voltage.

 

EDIT:

I forgot to mention the draw backs to going water over air, motherboards are designed with heatsinks on them for the air cooler to pass air over them, so when you go to water, it's generally a good idea to put a fan on the VRM and NB heatsinks to help cool everything down, the VRM etc sit next to your CPU by design so you don't want them heating up your chip. There are several ways to do this, most use 80mm stock heatsink fans that came with the CPU or a nice quick 120mm by either zip tie or heavy duty double sided tape, some have used screw with a fine thread and bolted it straight to the VRM, personally if I need to RMA my board I wouldn't want the kick back from the damage to the heatsink.

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