Top-Down Cooler Recommendations?

[AlfaProto]

I'm planning to upgrade my second PC, which is primarily gaming first, unlike my first PC, which is a mixed workload, here are the specs below:

1. Intel Core i7-6700K
2. Asrock Z270M ITX/AC
3. Coolermaster Vortex 211p*
4. G.Skill Ripjaw V DDR4 2133MHz (XMP disabled), 2x8GB
5. Crucial MX500 500 GB (M.2 form factor)
6. Toshiba 2x3TB HDD
7. Galax GeForce GTX 1660 Super. iGPU is disabled.
8. SilverStone SFX-L 500W
9. Apevia Qpack3
10. 1x120mm intake and 1x120mm outake
11. Blu-ray Writer
12. Windows 10 Pro

1 - I recently swapped out the Intel stock (copper base) to the Vortex 211p, because the motor is dying.

 

Currently my sibling is playing:

 

• Halo series
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Metro Exodus
• Warframe
• Forza Horizon 5

 

I may upgrade it to either i7-11700K or i9-11900K (it's $230 difference, for the bundle, which is the ASUS Prime Z590M-Plus). Unfortunately, most of the shops I've visited, no longer have 10th gen in stock, only 11th gen CPU. I mean, there's 10th gen, but only the Core i3 10th.

 

I'm looking at top-down cooler design due to:

 

1. Case design
2. Need for VRM cooling
3. Easier to dismount

I've been trying to search for a good top-down design, but most of them are:

 

1. Too bulky
2. Incorrect fin direction
3. Looks difficult to uninstall for maintenance purposes

 

If it were any other case, I would've thrown a H212 (whichever the latest version, and not ITX case).

 

Any recommendation would help!

[aisle9]

I've been using a Noctua NH-C14S on my 8086K almost exclusively since the day I bought it. Plenty of cooling performance, even in my Tu150 case that's totally unoptimized for it, and I could have it removed in about three minutes if I needed to. I'm only using the top mount for a fan because of the size of my RAM, making it stand around 140-ish mm tall. If you only use the bottom fan slot, it's 115mm tall. The biggest downside is that if your PCIe x16 slot is the highest slot on your board, it's going to sit over the RAM, period, but there's still plenty of air blowing across your VRMs in that scenario. If your top slot is a PCIe x1 and your PCIe x16 is the second slot down, you can rotate it 180* and have it sitting right on top of your VRMs.

 

When I bought it, it was $70, but I think it has come up in price now. As much as I periodically toy with replacing it with a tower cooler better optimized for the airflow in my case, I always end up just sticking with it. The 70C Cinebench runs in a case that isn't suited to it at all keep winning the day.

 

Also, it just looks really cool in there.

[WoodenMarker]

Are you planning to get a motherboard with vrm cooling issues? The Prime Z590M-Plus mentioned should be fine with a standard tower cooler.

What ram are you using? Where are you shopping / located? 

[AlfaProto]

16 hours ago, 8tg said:

In a Qpack3?

Thats a horizontal micro atx case that has 180mm of cpu cooler clearance. Either put a dark rock TF in there for just any other large air cooler because I’m not sure on exactly why you’d need a downdraft cooler in this case.

14 hours ago, WoodenMarker said:

Are you planning to get a motherboard with vrm cooling issues? The Prime Z590M-Plus mentioned should be fine with a standard tower cooler.

What ram are you using? Where are you shopping / located? 

Maybe it's due to ITX motherboard, I did have the H212+, it was a hassle to dis/mount. The previous case was the RVZ02, with Intel stock cooler, had to swap due to PCIE riser issue.

I'd watched the HUB's Z590 before posting, the ASUS Prime Z590-P (it should be the same VRM as the Z590M-Plus), doesn't seem that great when 11900K is on stock.

16 hours ago, aisle9 said:

I've been using a Noctua NH-C14S on my 8086K almost exclusively since the day I bought it. Plenty of cooling performance, even in my Tu150 case that's totally unoptimized for it, and I could have it removed in about three minutes if I needed to. I'm only using the top mount for a fan because of the size of my RAM, making it stand around 140-ish mm tall. If you only use the bottom fan slot, it's 115mm tall. The biggest downside is that if your PCIe x16 slot is the highest slot on your board, it's going to sit over the RAM, period, but there's still plenty of air blowing across your VRMs in that scenario. If your top slot is a PCIe x1 and your PCIe x16 is the second slot down, you can rotate it 180* and have it sitting right on top of your VRMs.

 

When I bought it, it was $70, but I think it has come up in price now. As much as I periodically toy with replacing it with a tower cooler better optimized for the airflow in my case, I always end up just sticking with it. The 70C Cinebench runs in a case that isn't suited to it at all keep winning the day.

 

Also, it just looks really cool in there.

From the manual alone, the mounting mechanism seems fixed after assembly, so I only need to remove the heatsink without caring the mounting.

 

But yeah, the orientation, I would pick orientation B (copper bend is on the PCIE slot)

 

[Dogzilla07]

2 hours ago, AlfaProto said:

From the manual alone, the mounting mechanism seems fixed after assembly, so I only need to remove the heatsink without caring the mounting.

The Hyper 212 difficulty you had is because it has a shit mounting system. Any new cooler, top-down or Tower from Noctua, Scythe, Thermalright ( and some others), is effortless and painless to mount and remove, it's day and night compared to the Hyper 212. And yes the mounting mechanism will be fixed for all of them.

 

The current best-buy from those on the US market, is Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 for ~$41. Don't mind the second fan, u can remove it for only 2-3 degrees C drop in performance, while gaining very good RAM compatibility if u need it.

 

If you're looking to downsize a case in the future, Thermalright offers 2 more coolers (that are engineered more advanced than what the competition currently offers) and those are (and they all come in Standard/White/Black, and some in White/Black ARGB):

 

1. Thermalright Silver Arrow 135 

2. Thermalright Assassin King 120 Mini

 

and the 2 above are only 135mm in height with a 120mm fan!, and the first one is 6x6mm heatpipe dual tower and additionally:

 

1. Thermalright Silver Arrow 110

 

this above is only 110mm in height with a great 92mm fan, and is 5x6mm heatpipe dual tower (more powerful and nicer looking Noctua NH-D9L alternative).

 

Otherwise if you're looking for some really small top-down coolers  and small iTX, and so on, check this forum post/guide I made for all available smallest height coolers in the world atm:

 

 

[AlfaProto]

On 12/27/2021 at 7:42 PM, Dogzilla07 said:

The Hyper 212 difficulty you had is because it has a shit mounting system. Any new cooler, top-down or Tower from Noctua, Scythe, Thermalright ( and some others), is effortless and painless to mount and remove, it's day and night compared to the Hyper 212. And yes the mounting mechanism will be fixed for all of them.

 

The current best-buy from those on the US market, is Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 for ~$41. Don't mind the second fan, u can remove it for only 2-3 degrees C drop in performance, while gaining very good RAM compatibility if u need it.

 

If you're looking to downsize a case in the future, Thermalright offers 2 more coolers (that are engineered more advanced than what the competition currently offers) and those are (and they all come in Standard/White/Black, and some in White/Black ARGB):

 

1. Thermalright Silver Arrow 135 

2. Thermalright Assassin King 120 Mini

 

and the 2 above are only 135mm in height with a 120mm fan!, and the first one is 6x6mm heatpipe dual tower and additionally:

 

1. Thermalright Silver Arrow 110

 

this above is only 110mm in height with a great 92mm fan, and is 5x6mm heatpipe dual tower (more powerful and nicer looking Noctua NH-D9L alternative).

 

Otherwise if you're looking for some really small top-down coolers  and small iTX, and so on, check this forum post/guide I made for all available smallest height coolers in the world atm:

 

 

Actually, the H212 is easy to mount the heatsink if the space around the socket is spacious, unlike ITX motherboard (but I'm switching to mATX). Just that the older H212 Plus and X has the annoying scissor-type, how I know this? I own both, I'm still using the H212X to cool my 150A current limited or 125W power limit i9-10850K with 2 fans.

I mean there's a reason why I am not looking for tower cooler, there's no fan mount close to the VRM. The Apevia X-Qpack 3, the motherboard is horizontal, not vertical, it has a single front and back intake (120mm) and 120mm (I need to check if this is 120 or 80mm) 'top'. By top means, if this were traditional vertical motherboard, this fan is located at the side panel.

Plus, I'm severely disappointed by VRM heatsinks after 70-series chipset (Ivy bridge), most of them are just hunk of metal, not even fins. Heck, even the Z77A-G45 has 'fins' or Z68A-G43. Even Gigabyte's own UD line-up from that era has decent heatsink at the main VRM area. I'mma skip Haswell because the VRM is part of the CPU.

 

I've glanced through your ITX cooler suggestions, they are of no-go, because I have to flip the board in order to remove the mounting mechanism and afterwards the heatsink entirely when aisle9's Noctua NH-C14S,I can simply remove the heatsink without caring the mounting mechanism. Even my H212X, once I removed the heatsink, the mounting pegs/backplate remains.

I appreciate your suggestions, but you've missed the point entirely:

1. CPU cooler is top-down, thus able to cool the VRM (even if it's one direction, I think the VRMs closer to the I/O ports are core related, minus system agent VRM, MC VRM and iGPU VRM.)
2. Top-down cooler provide cooling the motherboard's PCB.
3. CPU cooler is easier to dismount for cleaning (only leaving the mounting mechanism on the board, only the heatsink is removed, prefer if the fan remains intact with the heatsink)

I mean, just look at Intel's stock cooler, it's easy to uninstall and install, except that couldn't cool current version of i7s. I don't need to take out the RAM sticks to un/install, nor move/flip the motherboard around.

[Dogzilla07]

There's tower coolers that cool the VRM as well, not as much top-down, but enough. The Apevia you use still doesn't have an open side directly above a mounted top-down cooler, so  dual-tower cooler (either NH-D15S/D15 or Thermalright Frost Spirit/Frost Commander/Peerless Assassin) would work better than a top-down (after tinkering). And a smaller one like SIlver Arrow 135 would work even better. It's just that it would take some tinkering to have have the airflow setup reversed to make the most of that case.

 

Not that top-down won't work as well, it can be good enough, as long as you have a decent 4,5+ heatpipe top-down cooler and at least full sized 25mm fan on it. (would take less tinkering to optimized the airflow compared to the tower ones above).

 

As for removing a cooler with the fan on. yes it's possible on some single tower coolers, but not these dual tower, which also cool the pcb and the vrm. So yeah it won't be as easy to remove a top-down (especially one screwed in from behind the motherboaard), but it would be something in between, after removing the mid fan.

[Demonic Donut]

On 12/26/2021 at 8:53 AM, aisle9 said:

I've been using a Noctua NH-C14S on my 8086K almost exclusively since the day I bought it. Plenty of cooling performance, even in my Tu150 case that's totally unoptimized for it, and I could have it removed in about three minutes if I needed to. I'm only using the top mount for a fan because of the size of my RAM, making it stand around 140-ish mm tall. If you only use the bottom fan slot, it's 115mm tall. The biggest downside is that if your PCIe x16 slot is the highest slot on your board, it's going to sit over the RAM, period, but there's still plenty of air blowing across your VRMs in that scenario. If your top slot is a PCIe x1 and your PCIe x16 is the second slot down, you can rotate it 180* and have it sitting right on top of your VRMs.

 

When I bought it, it was $70, but I think it has come up in price now. As much as I periodically toy with replacing it with a tower cooler better optimized for the airflow in my case, I always end up just sticking with it. The 70C Cinebench runs in a case that isn't suited to it at all keep winning the day.

 

Also, it just looks really cool in there.

I have a C14 on my wife's 3600, pretty much identical build to mine in a different case. It works very will. Definitely recommend if it will work for you.

[kevinisbeast707]

I have a dark rock TF2 on my 5900x and it cools it perfectly well. The only time it doesn't quite cool it is when I have an all core load with pbo set to 200w. I'm not entirely sure if you can get to the screws through both fans but it's is fairly easy to mount and taking the cooler off doesn't remove the mounting mechanism. 

[AlfaProto]

18 hours ago, Demonic Donut said:

I have a C14 on my wife's 3600, pretty much identical build to mine in a different case. It works very will. Definitely recommend if it will work for you.

The C14 looks more and more appealing, as this reminds me of CM's Gemini II, which no longer exist.

6 hours ago, kevinisbeast707 said:

I have a dark rock TF2 on my 5900x and it cools it perfectly well. The only time it doesn't quite cool it is when I have an all core load with pbo set to 200w. I'm not entirely sure if you can get to the screws through both fans but it's is fairly easy to mount and taking the cooler off doesn't remove the mounting mechanism. 

Oof, the DR TF2 has a yellow warning via the motherboard checker.