Air cooler VS Water cooler

[AskTJ]

Hi LTT forums.

 

My brother and I had a debate about whether I should get an air cooler or a water cooler.

 

I have to choose between a be quiet! Pure Rock Slim and a Thermaltake extreme 3.0 240mm AIO.

 

I have the water cooler on hand, but I dont feel like mounting it in my small case, and the amount of work it takes to assemble and disassemble whenever i am cleaning my mother board.

 

I don't have the mounting bolts for my water cooler AIO, so I am waiting on a cheap place to buy them.

 

The CPU I am using is the i5 4670k at stock speeds, and will overclock it to a MAXIMUM of 4.0GHz, and possibly, a xeon in the future, if I can afford one. I dont want my temperatures over 65-70 degrees, as the i5 is a used chip.

 

Thank you for reading - Tj

[WoodenMarker]

There's no need to keep temps so low. If you're not pushing high voltages and not leaving the cpu pinged at 100c, it should easily last longer than you'd ever need it to. 4ghz is barely an oc and you could probably sustain it with an undervolt and temps safe below 80-90c even with the stock cooler. 

What cooler do you have installed currently? It's probably fine as is. 

[AskTJ]

31 minutes ago, WoodenMarker said:

It's probably fine as is. 

Thanks for replying. I am going to use the air cooler, the be quiet! Pure rock slim.

[LogicalDrm]

You are comparing two coolers which are quite far from each other. AIO will perform better, thats fact. PR Slim is budget cooler and will do its job, but don't expect miracles in performance.

[AskTJ]

I ended up going with the air cooler. Ordered it today, coming in 1-2 days. Thanks for your votes!