£70 budget for cooling - air or water?

[BTilbury]

Hey there. As mentioned in the title I've got £80 to sort out the ugly stock cooler on my 7600k (sinful, I know. At least I'm fixing it.) There a couple local places I will look around for cooling stuff, but I'm concerned as it's retail I'll be able to get basically all of it cheaper online - before even starting on the amount of options. Where is the best place to be looking for stuff online though? I've got a mid tower atx case and space for up to 280mm radiators according to my specs, but I'm more than fine with a decent air cooler.

Thank you!

 

[pqwoerituytruei]

Without knowing what case you have i can not say it will fit but you could get a NH-D15, it is £7 over budget on amazon, but it is competitive with some AIO coolers, but your AIO selection should be better than mine (I live in the US where a patent prevents competing products)
personally i just see a pump as another point of failure so i just stick with air, i realize there are extreme cases that would require water (the crazy expensive i9 CPUs running at 5Ghz for example)
the Nh-D15S is available, it is the same thing with 1 fan less, but those fans are quite pricey if you want to get a second later
i know noctua will provide any mounting hardware you need if upgrade your system free

 

[mackerel]

Dark Rock Pro 4 currently £63.80 on Amazon. It is comparable to the high end Noctuas but arguably looks better.

 

[Woomack]

Recently I was testing Arctic Freezer 34 eSports DUO on 9700K@5GHz and I was really surprised how well it performs. It also runs really quiet and is cheap -> https://www.amazon.co.uk/ARCTIC-Fre...sprefix=arctic+cooler,aps,193&sr=8-3-fkmrnull

This thing just arrived but I had no time to test it yet. It's also much above the budget but I assume it will be a top choice for air cooling (well, at least for me).
https://www.amazon.co.uk/noctua-NH-...words=NH-U12A&qid=1553677713&s=gateway&sr=8-1

 

[mackerel]

Recently I was testing Arctic Freezer 34 eSports DUO on 9700K@5GHz and I was really surprised how well it performs. It also runs really quiet and is cheap -> https://www.amazon.co.uk/ARCTIC-Fre...sprefix=arctic+cooler,aps,193&sr=8-3-fkmrnull

Sold! Just ordered one as I'm short on coolers for AM4 and don't want to spend lots on one. Do you think it would perform better or worse than a D9L though?

I have to wonder if there's much difference in the "4 heatpipe 120mm" class coolers. The good old Hyper 212 is to me still a reference point on the more budget end. Without measurements, the images suggest this one might be a little thicker so could have some advantage from that.

 

[BTilbury]

Little bit over budget (worth it), but loved the look of the Dark Rock Pro 4 - just ordered it, can't wait to get it installed and get my clock speeds up!

Watercooling could be an option but my case is quite large , and bigger 240/280mm watercoolers are prohibitively expensive and from what I understand aren't hugely better than a big chunk of metal on top of the processor - they do look much cleaner though, I must admit.

Thanks all!

 

[Woomack]

Should be good enough. Many large tower coolers perform similar. With some it's just matter of size and if you can install it in your PC case or with tall memory modules.

Sold! Just ordered one as I'm short on coolers for AM4 and don't want to spend lots on one. Do you think it would perform better or worse than a D9L though?

I have to wonder if there's much difference in the "4 heatpipe 120mm" class coolers. The good old Hyper 212 is to me still a reference point on the more budget end. Without measurements, the images suggest this one might be a little thicker so could have some advantage from that.

It performs better than Hyper 212. Actually it performs like larger tower coolers so about what is advertised on ARCTIC website. I had temps about 5-6°C worse than on 280 AIO and about 5°C better than on Corsair H80v2 AIO with 2 120mm fans. I won't hide I was surprised how well it was performing in my tests. It was also really quiet.

 

[mackerel]

The cooler arrived today. The box seemed relatively heavy for its size. Opening it, it looks nice although I hate the fan clip wires. Maybe the worst I've come across so far. Anyway, I went to grab the AMD system it was going to go in... and found I had a 240mm AIO in it already. Doh! I got confused, the AMD system I was thinking of, I gave away recently. So... now I have a spare cooler for whatever comes next. Maybe I'll upgrade another system...