Liquid Cooling Recommendations?

Dubesta11 · July 20, 2016

I will be overclocking a 6600k on an ASUS Z170-E, and I was wondering what cooler I should get. I have the potential to reuse my Dark Rock 3, but the cooler is a pain when I need to install the motherboard or clean the system. I was thinking a water cooler would be better since I would have room to work with. I used to own a H55, but I sold that with a 660ti as a liquid cooled GPU. Any recomendations, or would it not cool much better than a good air cooler?

Sakkura · July 20, 2016

Unless you go to the pretty extreme top end of the spectrum, water cooling is poor compared to air (at the top end there are no air coolers, because of size limits). For the same cooling performance, you get more noise and a higher price.

staubgame · July 20, 2016

Agreed on this.

2 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Unless you go to the pretty extreme top end of the spectrum, water cooling is poor compared to air (at the top end there are no air coolers, because of size limits). For the same cooling performance, you get more noise and a higher price.

I tried the Corsair H80i V2 compared to a Dark Rock 3.

It is waaay louder and not really cooler at all.

Only when OC'ing my i7-2600k it cooled it longer, but managed only to do so for 20 minutes until it got too hot as well.

A lot of techies use 240mm Solutions, I assume they are better but they are at least 100$ plus.

Simon771 · July 20, 2016

7 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Unless you go to the pretty extreme top end of the spectrum, water cooling is poor compared to air (at the top end there are no air coolers, because of size limits). For the same cooling performance, you get more noise and a higher price.

100% agree.

I was using Kraken X31 on i7 4790 (locked chip). TDP max was 45W ... never went beyond that.

Temps got high even to 70°C during stress testing. And that's with everything on stock. Imagine if I changed voltage to 1,3V like you will ... it would throttle.

(yes I know you can't OC locked chip, but for the sake af argument I did that)

It will be better if you buy some nice air cooler with huge heatsink and 2-3 fans.

If noise if what you are afraid, keep in mind that if it have 3 fans, they can all run at slower rpm, so there shouldn't be such a huge problem

Dubesta11 · July 20, 2016

1 hour ago, Sakkura said:

Unless you go to the pretty extreme top end of the spectrum, water cooling is poor compared to air (at the top end there are no air coolers, because of size limits). For the same cooling performance, you get more noise and a higher price.

I'm thinking of just keeping my cooler since it would save me quite a bit of money. If I get a good sized case then fitting it won't be a problem.