Hi boys,

being in my early thirtiees it seems I've aged far too quick on a simple field of hw:

WTF has happened to CPU-coolers? 4 years ago that big Zalman did it all: Quiet, efficient cooling of my CPU for a somewhat reasonable price. Back then it was a kind of "fire and forget" approach: Spend twice the money than you would on a piece of common mid-range hardware and be sure to get a quiet and efficient cooling solution.


By now we have:

1, Engineers realising right at this moment how well heat management/transmission corresponds to bigger surfaces: Whow; it's become stacks of metal sheets (My money's on an engineering team trying to produce not-so-edgy polygonal erm...discs for revolutionary ideas serving logistic purposes)

2, A sound split of responsibilities in the elements/companies involved: Then we picked a cooling unit and cared eventually/if at all for some highly specific heat sink compound.
Right now happy costumers are held to study 20+ reviews on stacked metal sheets, 10+ reviews on fans, check for compatibilities among them and potential space problems with recent graphics card "bricks" ad nauseum

3, A split culture of testing those cooler-multithingies: Those who care for temperatures only ("temps below 30°C, everything within its specs") and those who try to capture a decent load/noise graph (useful) ..oh let's not forget the ambitioned sort of hw-testers who measure fan speed noise levels and have the readers continue the logics.
Like: Hey, if YOU are about to buy a cooling solution why not go ahead and imagine how the suggested "CPU load" noise level of you cooler relates to the buzz of your supposed fan rotations and just get an idea for yourself, eh?



Please,
could someone of you younger or more experienced/intellectually less aged members recommend a cooler/fan box set or compact Hydro cooling unit (with a silent pump) for an intel 2600k that will be overclocked which?

Before all it must be "silent", then "quiet" and finally effective?

atm I'm thinking about getting the "Prolimatech Genesis" and attach the biggest fans available (like 140mm)


thx in advance,

muffinstomp

P.S.: What kind of RAM should I buy? I need 8 Gigs and as it seems the gaps of performance among specific RAM timing rates have ...erm vanished? What BUS speed works fastest with the 2600k?

I'm using the rather expensive Thermalright Venomous X-RT w/2x-110CFM third party fans. With similar fans, it is typically within 1C of the Prolimatech units in on line test reports -- the Thermalright is cooler in tests. I don't consider 1C significant.

I tested the Thermalright against a much cheaper COOLER MASTER Hyper 212. Both perform the same (within a degree or so) with the same fans.

So, I conclude anything that is the same size, same heat pipe count, and looks a lot like the Thermalright, Coolermaster, or Prolimatech will perform similarly. The Prolimatech you picked will probably be similar. The Thermalright X-RT has a really nice fan attachment scheme (for push pull one has to buy an extra connector).

In my experiments with 56CFM and 110CFM fans running at a variety of speeds, noise comes down to fan speed. Push pull (two fans) is quieter for the same cooling than one faster fan because the push-pull combination can run slower.

I found, the design of the fan blades matters to sound volume -- but, I can't give a rule of thumb other than to buy fans advertised as quiet.

I found, max cooling has limits. That is, no matter how fast the fans CFM wise or how many, there is a limit temperature one cannot cool below (after accounting for the air temperature in the room which I measured at the fan intake). Slowing the fans to make a "quiet" (not silent) system adds 5 to 8C to that minimum temperature. This is for my Phenom II nominal 125W CPU. A lower wattage Intel CPU may have a different relationship.

What does it all mean? Get a big slab cooler and a couple big quiet fans (Push, Pull) and run the fans slow enough to be "quiet". That's about all one can do with air cooling.

Liquid cooling is not a sure thing because the liquid is air cooled. Thus, the lower limit temperature will not necessarily be better than with a big slab air cooler (if the cooling air is the same temperature for both coolers). Better that the liquid be refrigerated. But, that's another story and I have not tested my ideas on that one.

The site to check for silent cooling solutions is Silent PC Review

Silent PC Review


FWIW.

P.S. I notice Silent PC Review likes the heat sink you picked.

This site does a lot of reviews and links to reviews of cooling solutions.

http://www.frostytech.com/

A slightly loud cooler does not bother me. It's like the sound of power.

I love my Zalman9700NT...

I can't recommend a cooler, I have a Thermaltake Frio. At 2k rpm it's not loud but it definitely isn't silent.

For memory, PC 12800 should fit the bill (1600mhz). You can use faster, not sure what performance gain it might offer for the step up in price though.

Thx for all your input guys!

I guess I'm sold on that cooler. It's just that those perfect fans for it are hard to get, the complete bundle being available again not before June! After saving the money for years I decided to do something useful while waiting again .


I still can't see why one review deems the compact watercooling solution "Antec KÜHLER H2O 620" silent as corpse while the next one calls it sub-standard compared with modern aircoolers

There might be differences down to the fans attached (provider, number of devices mounted, diameter, direction of airflow, revolutions and voltage). But how the hell can one product be the sh!t/the spoiler at the same time???

Nice: Stumbled across the Thermalright Shaman gagging state of the art graphics cards. The next source of noise I'd had to cope with...

Thx for your ideas, keep'em coming so other readers won't miss the latest top cooling solutions...

Greets,
muffinstomp

I recently switched a 9500 CNPS with a NH-U12P SE 2 to cool a Phenom II x4 955.
The 9500 cooling performance equaled about that of AMD's boxed coolers ~ 58°C @ stock speed / load. The Zalmans fixed fan was rather noisy, and i was planning to OC - so i was looking for a better performing kit on a modular basis.

Thermalrights Venomous X, Alpenfoehns Gross Clockner, Scythes Mugen II, and Noctuas U12P SE2. All of them have excellent reviews, i decided for the U12P SE2 and havn't looked back.

The U12P with 1 Fan keeps temp around 46°C @ 3.6 Ghz / load, and is inaudible in my case. The SE Edition comes with 2 NF P12 120mm fans (1300 rpm), which are considered by many to be just in the sweet spot of performance:db. Installing the 2nd fan for a push/pull config, yields about -3°C better cooling performance. I keep the second one as spare part, as a single fan is more than sufficent.

Noctua and Thermalright are not cheap, but the built quality and performance excells, and so does Noctuas support. Having an AM3 board i was looking for a 90° mounting bracket to better position the cooler within the case airflow:


A week after sending them proof of purchase, i got the mounting kit free of charge.

Noctua NH-D14: the best air cooler out there. Walks over more expensive "water coolers" like H70 and similar.

Dead silent as well. Look no further.