Will the Noctua NH-D15 fit? (RAM clearance)

[Cotroneo]

So I have a 7700K, and know how much hotter it runs than the 6600K, but I didn't think that it'd be consistently reaching 80 degrees no matter how demanding the game is.

All the fans in my case are PWM except for bottom one, which  is to block  the air upwards so  the intake has straighter path to the exhaust.

I should also note that my 1080 Ti has never reached temps above 65 degrees.

 

I currently have the Cryorig H5 Universal, paired with Startech Metal Oxide paste. If a different paste would reduce the temps, let me know.

 

Here's a picture of my current setup. I'm using a Fractal Design R5 (windowless)

 

[Cyracus]

gskill ripjaws V? should fit no problem, might have to move the front fan up a little or move it to the other side of the cooler (doesn't matter either way). As for different paste, they're pretty much all the same, unless you get really cheap stuff  you're looking at ~2-3ºC difference, 5ºC max. 

[m0k]

what ram do you have....?

[NoobCase]

Your current cooler is pretty decent. Your thermal paste I’m pretty sure isn’t, and the 7700ks do run hot. I’d try a different thermal paste like the mx-4 or some of the thermal grizzly options before you invest in a new cooler.

furthermore to know if you’ll have clearance issues it might be nice to know which ram you have or at least how tall they are

[bcredeur97]

I have a NH-D15 in my R5. It fits fine. I have plain DDR3 dimms though with no heatspreaders (lol)

But I think it'll fit yours fine too. There's more room than you think.

I love the D15! keeps my 3570k super cool. I was shocked at the difference over my old 120mm AIO lol

[Cotroneo]

3 hours ago, mok said:

what ram do you have....?

Everything's on my profile, but I just added it all to my signature.

[Cotroneo]

1 hour ago, bcredeur97 said:

I have a NH-D15 in my R5. It fits fine. I have plain DDR3 dimms though with no heatspreaders (lol)

But I think it'll fit yours fine too. There's more room than you think.

I love the D15! keeps my 3570k super cool. I was shocked at the difference over my old 120mm AIO lol

Awesome! I was super worried about it. Also, do you think that I should move my bottom fan to the removable fan panel on the R5 as an intake? Right now it's just blowing upwards to help the airflow (Want front intake to be going straight to the CPU, and not below). Also, what temps are you getting with your CPU (not stock)?

[bcredeur97]

1 hour ago, Cotroneo said:

Awesome! I was super worried about it. Also, do you think that I should move my bottom fan to the removable fan panel on the R5 as an intake? Right now it's just blowing upwards to help the airflow (Want front intake to be going straight to the CPU, and not below). Also, what temps are you getting with your CPU (not stock)?

my temps top out at 72C with both fans going on the D15 at whatever speed they default to (I didn't change anything... can't really hear them either)

And that's at 4.5 GHz and 1.34ish volts. about as high as I want to go on the voltage there. 

voltage is actually too high, could be lower. My motherboard is awful and has no Load Line Calibration so I have to set it overly high to make up for the voltage droops.

 

oh and this is in a 70F/21C room with humidity around 40%

[Cotroneo]

Just now, bcredeur97 said:

my temps top out at 72C with both fans going on the D15 at whatever speed they default to (I didn't change anything... can't really hear them either)

And that's at 4.5 GHz and 1.35ish volts. about as high as I want to go on the voltage there. 

voltage is actually too high, could be lower. My motherboard is awful and has no Load Line Calibration so I have to set it overly high to make up for the voltage droops.

That's awesome, especially since I don't really plan on overclocking anything. Also, I was looking at Noctuas diagram of the NH-D15, and it showed that the RAM clearance when using both heat sinks is 34mm. The height of my Ripjaws V is 44MM. I wound up going with the H5 Universal because the H5 Ultimate didn't have clearance. I wouldn't want to be getting the D15 if I'm only using one fan with it.

Should I go with liquid cooling instead? If so, what would you recommend? In the picture you can see that I removed all the drive bays at the front. This was because I had initially planned on using a 240MM cooler. 

Do you think I should get an H100i V2? Or is there anything better than that? 

[LogicalDrm]

14 hours ago, Cotroneo said:

Awesome! I was super worried about it. Also, do you think that I should move my bottom fan to the removable fan panel on the R5 as an intake? Right now it's just blowing upwards to help the airflow (Want front intake to be going straight to the CPU, and not below).

 

Current fan setup is fine.

 

13 hours ago, Cotroneo said:

That's awesome, especially since I don't really plan on overclocking anything. Also, I was looking at Noctuas diagram of the NH-D15, and it showed that the RAM clearance when using both heat sinks is 34mm. The height of my Ripjaws V is 44MM. I wound up going with the H5 Universal because the H5 Ultimate didn't have clearance. I wouldn't want to be getting the D15 if I'm only using one fan with it.

 

D15 has 64mm under the fins, and 32mm if you place the fan as low as you can. You can move that fan way upwards to clear RAM, or move it to pull instead of push. R5 has 180mm clearance. Which means it has full 20mm space between top of heatsink and sidepanel. You can easily lift fan 11mm upwards to fit all RAM you need.

 

Another option is to get 120mm fan on that side which gives automatically 52mm of space.

 

13 hours ago, Cotroneo said:

Should I go with liquid cooling instead?

No. D15 beats most 240mm AIOs and gives 280mm rads good competition. Only reasons to go with AIOs are highest level of OC, really humid conditions, space restrictions, rgb ram and other looks-nonsense. For any other reasons like performance, price or noise levels, dual towers will beat AIOs.