Blogs Have expensive heatsinks had their day?

water cooling, all day long

 

The above quote is what I will do next build. I thought expensive air cooling had its day when £40 AMD heatsinks started winning prizes in the mag. That money kitted out the rest of two PC cases with fans last build, separate to the HSFs.

For watercooling, that's a much wider area so naturally there would be a larger spread of prices, so if you got the right mix, you wouldn't feel like it was a ripoff as £40 AMD air coolers do for me. Let's face it we're talking about a difference in clip assembly for AMD sockets, Artic Cooling don't charge a premium because they want everyone to be able to buy the same box.

 

Going off on a bit of a tangent here, but...

My computer (Dual Opteron 250 desktop) is a multi-purpose machine, and one if it's purposes is sometimes as a clothing rack. I've noticed that when it's covered with clothes it gets a LOT warmer, despite the fans not being blocked. Apparently, a fair bit of the cooling is through radiation from the case rather than just convection from the fans. I haven't seen any measurements as to how great of an effect this is, but it does make me wonder if designing a case to radiate heat more efficiently could reduce the amount of air required and hence fan noise.

 

h100 with different fans is near enough silent on sandybridge at resonable clocks ( What you would achieve with air coolers if they were rocking 1800 rpm fans )

as for advantages

wieght on board for one, most pcs never leave the house i get that but if your into lann gaming then your pc moves around a good deal more and chugging around a 1kg wieght on your board is not something id personally like to do.

Much easier install,

They are not cheaper but they are comparable

h60 is about £53

be quiet dark rock pro is £52

( prices taking from scan )

in ivy bridge testing ( which is the where things should be tested )

both are above 90c thermal cealing so niether can cut it at the overclocks that were tested

4.7ghz 1.3vcore temps ( review from www.kitguru.net)

h60 92c
dark rock pro 92c

all fans where set to max for the test

so your general person would be seeing over 100c

 

Unless of course you get one of the examples with a dodgy pump. Yes I know Corsair have found the problem but even if you buy one today you have good odds on getting a loud one.

Usually better on an high end aircooler, depends on the cooler in question I'll grant you. Something like a Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-A would beat a H100 without spending anymore money on fans.

Prices (From Scan):

Corsair H100 with two god awful loud fans: £82.92
Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E with two excellent fans: £69.60

You make a good point on weight, but then 99% of users don't move their systems around, those that do would be better with a hydro cooler yes. Or take proper precautions with foam spacers in place for transport.

 

All I can say on the subject of all-in-one coolers is that they're fine when they work but can be catastrophic when they fail. I had a system with a cool-it Domino, all was well until it failed, exploding and covered the whole shebang with coolant. Wrecked everything except the case. £1000 down the pan and Cool-It offered nothing in response except a reference to the buyer agreement that stated the unit was to be used at the buyer's discretion. WILL NEVER USE WATER COOLING AGAIN!

 

Omg

 

"Sandia Cooler" anyone?

 

If it was cheap/reliable enough to make at an acceptable cost it would have been brought to market already.

 

hmm is it just me or is that cooler milled/mounted off a bit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWQZNXEKkaU#t=5m57s

 

I swapped the fans on my Frio for Asaka Apaches, and it runs silently whilst sitting at around 37C idle, and never over 65C load. I tried a H80 and the pump was faulty - and sending it for RMA to Corsair cost me £25 due to their facility being in the Netherlands. Total waste of cash.

 

DOH!

 

Got an akasa venom (iirc, it's big with dual green fans) which I won somewhere and it's replacing an intel stock cooler on an E5400, the stock cooler gave me temperatures of 70 degrees while at 3.7Ghz so 1Ghz above stock, the venom gave me an extra 150Mhz on top of that for not much of an improvement in temperatures (but I did need more voltage so that explains that). So, I don't much see the point in big coolers on small heat outputs.

I've been testing out peltiers on a PC I built for a friend, custom watercooling and a 200W peltier crowning the 3930K, that thing will drop well below 0 degrees when idling though I haven't got around to overclocking it so I can't say much for load temps. All this just makes me think that maybe we've missed a trick, CPUs are easier to cool so what's the point in a big heatsink? Peltiers! So you've got a 100W CPU and a cooler rated for 300W, slap a 200W peltier in the mix and a bit of waterproofing vaseline so you can really push that CPU!

 

I've dealt with peltiers back in the day.. the problem is you still have to remove the heat from the hot side- why it doesn't really make sense.. a good heat pipe exchange will pretty much keep up with the what the sink and fan are able to move

you can have a huge peltier.. but you still have to remove the heat for it to work- it doesn't just go away like you'd think.. you'll see when you own one- it's not all that great

 

I agree; Peltier coolers are great in theory but can prove to be quite a pain in practice. Used them in several non-PC applications - great for sub-ambient (with adequate insulation) but too much of a headache for me for anything more than intermittent use.

 

My mistake on my earlier post - my Noctua NH-D14 keeps everything in my case below 40C not 40F.

I am not sure why you would anyone would not want the best cooling available for their computer. The equation is simple, heat = component breakdown or shortened life. It really is that simple - this is why I do not understand people who won't spend $100 on a quality CPU cooler.

Computer companies create cold rooms for their computers for a reason. They know this extends reliability and longevity.

While I sort of understand the question, quality heat sinks are not going anywhere for quite a while. This is witnessed by the fact that Ivy Bridge, Intel's latest CPU runs HOTTER than Sandy Bridge by quite a lot.