Good overclock with air cooling?

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

Can you get pretty good cooling potential with air cooling or water cooling is really the way to go?

[brob]

Yes and yes.

 

Liquid will generally do a better job cooling. Air is generally quieter for the same level of cooling. Pick the one the works for you.

[91wow]

If you're going for like a $70 liquid cooler, get a $75 air cooler, it tends to cool better and quieter. Shoot for the $100-$140 water coolers really. the one I have been recommending is te coolermaster glacier 240L, it's a redone swiftech H220.

[Akolyte]

Liquid can do better but normally the higher end air coolers have allot more better quality components compared to a closed loop water cooler.  Something like the Noctua NH-U14s is a great cooler.  Don't expect to go to something like 4.8GHZ with a 4670k and expect perfect temps at load, but the Noctua coolers are the ones to beat imo

[Saladin]

You can get very solid overclocks on air. I had my 3570k up to 4.2/4.3 using a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo ($35 USD). Now that being said water is a better conductor of heat than air and you can get much better overclocks on water at lower temperatures with less noise. I personally would not recommend using an all in on cooler that is less than a 240mm radiator. Remember that an all in one will be less efficient than a custom loop and will perform less well. In my experience a high end air cooler (such as a Silver Arrow or a Noctua NH-D14) will out perform an all in one water cooler and may even be quieter (depending on if you use stock fans for the all in one or replace them with better ones). As for noise that depends highly on the fin density of the radiator and even more highly on the quality and type of fans you use.