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Thread: Cooling them Hotties

  1. #1
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    Cooling them Hotties

    Cooling is getting more and more important now CPUs and GPUs are spilling heat like there's no tomorrow in your casing.
    How to keep the system cool? There are lots of choices:
    1. Air. Add fans till there's no more room for them, though it may depend on your casing and the outside temperature whether air will be enough and the noise of 10+ fans in one system alone may be prohibitive.
    2. Water. Lots of commercial products around nowadays. Costs a bit more than air cooling, but is less noisy and seems to work better too.
    3. Liquid nitrogen. Works even better than water, because it is far colder.
    4. Phase changer(s). For those who like to be on the cutting edge. You can even put a few in series to approach the absolute zero...


    Air
    There are a few things that are important for air coolers: The amount of air that gets moved, the pressure the fan can deliver while moving the air and the noise it takes to do so. In the past a 40mm fan was enough, now 120mm is the pretty much standard in modern casings. Fans have gotten bigger and bigger because bigger fans can push more air while making less noise. Those who buy a Cooler Master HAF 932 can get three 230mm(!) fans with it! The biggest problem with air cooling remains that you can not get lower temperatures than the ambient temperature -if you find air cooling who can achieve such a feat in the first place-, a problem that already painfully rises with our Australian and Southern US members, let alone those who live even closer to the equator...

    Part 1: super-sized case fans (>200mm) Let's start with the utter kings of cool -at least in looks- of the air department:
    Brand Type Diameter in mm Speed in rpm Noise in dB(A) Airflow in cfm cfm/dB Airflow in m3/h m3h/dB Air pressure in mm H2O pressure/dB
    1st PC Corp. FN-250
    250
    820
    20.00
    105.00
    5.25
    na
    -
    na
    -
    Akasa AK-F2230SM
    220
    600
    23.48
    95.00
    4.05
    162.10
    6.90
    0.66
    0.03
    BitFenix Spectre Pro
    230
    900
    25.6
    156.27
    6.10
    na
    -
    1.81
    0.07
    BitFenix Spectre
    230
    800
    19.9
    97.80
    4.91
    na
    -
    1.08
    0.05
    Ichbinleise EKL 225/800
    225
    300-800
    11-29
    Rexus Rexflo 250mm
    250
    800
    24.90
    105.20
    4.22
    na
    -
    na
    -
    Rexus Rexflo 360mm
    300
    600
    21.60
    126.70
    5.84
    na
    -
    na
    -
    ThermalTake Thunderblade 23
    230
    800
    15.00
    76.00
    5.06
    na
    -
    0.49
    0.03
    Yate Loon D22SL-12H
    220
    600
    25.50
    135.00
    5.29
    na
    -
    na
    -
    Yate Loon D22BL-12H
    220
    750
    31.80
    168.00
    5.28
    na
    -
    na
    -

    These figures, however, are the manufacturers claims. In real life/testing other values might be measured, such as with the Akasa AK-F2230SM and the IchBinLeise 225/800, which both get thoroughly trashed by the reviewers, just as they do the Yate Loon products to a lesser extent. With these biggies air pressure is less important, as that parameter only becomes really useful when pushing air through/around things (water cooler radiators, CPU heatsinks, hard disks, SSDs)

    to be extended....
    Last edited by Dirk Broer; 03-06-2013 at 12:43 AM. Reason: Rexflo 360 is actually only 300


  2. #2
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    Dirk I have one of these that I bought years ago: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835702001 I guess I'll dig it out and see if I can get it to fit on the AM3+ board somehow. I was able to push the 939 socket 4800+ 2.4 GHz to over 3.3 GHz with it. It was stable at 3.2 GHz.
    Last edited by Terry1953; 03-06-2013 at 12:03 AM.

  3. #3
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    Hi Terry,

    That's CPU cooling, coming to that later in the article. Safe to say for now that bigger is not always better, as the 200+ case fans do not always deliver -a fact that nicely gets pointed out in the Bit-Tech article-.
    There's such an awful lot of CPU coolers around and so much tests/reviews that I might even write about RAM cooling before I come around to CPU! And then there's the aftermarket GPU cooling to consider...


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    GPU cooling is a biggie..... The powerful gpu's put out a LOT of heat. A lot of it!!!!

  5. #5
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    Hi Brucifer,

    When you're into water cooling, you can consider cooling the GPU as well

    Then again, you can do all you want using air of course...

    Now for big BitFenix 230mm bottom, front and top fans! (and a 140mm rear exhaust)
    Last edited by Dirk Broer; 03-06-2013 at 04:26 PM.


  6. #6
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    NeoGen is offline AMD Users Alchemist Moderator
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    Holy mother of heatsinks!!

    Has that motherboard not cracked with all that weight on it? I would pay to see what would happen if you flipped that motherboard vertically.


    EDIT- Awesome work on that post Dirk! Just the fact that you took time to compile all that info into a neat looking table and easy to read is fantastic.

    I myself have on my shopping list to buy a Noctua NH-D14 soon to (finally!!) replace this god awful noisy AMD Stock HSF that came with the Phenom II X6 1100T. It seems to have some good reviews on NewEgg.
    Last edited by NeoGen; 03-09-2013 at 05:58 AM.

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    Lol, that is quite the cpu cooler there NeoGen. :-) And yes, that is quite the artistic endeavor on the motherboard there Dirk!!! The liquid cooling is still the ultimate answer for me I think. It's just that I have to make some time in my schedule and force myself to spend some bucks to start experimenting with some gpu/cpu setups. Anyone got any pictures of their actual water cooled gpu's???

  8. #8
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    Being a staunch member of the AA (That's Aircooling Addicts, not Alcoholics Anonymous -I do like a beer or two-), I exchanged my A8-3820 with my A8-3870K, as the latter was having trouble losing it's heath in a A-Open micro-ATX casing. Now the A8-3870K sits on my ASUS F1A75-V EVO, together with the G.Skill 2133 Mhz memory -no problems pushing these sticks to 1866Mhz and further- while the A8-3820 sits on my Gigabyte GA-A75M-UD2H, which has no trouble running the Corsair 1866Mhz at their rated value, like the ASUS board had.
    The 3820 inherited the AMD stock cooler from the 3870K, while that hothead is now being kept cool under my trusted ThermalTake Big Typ 120 thermaltake_big_typhoon.jpg
    I'll post a picture of the 3870K in it's Corsair Carbide 300R casing on our Facebook page later.
    Last edited by Dirk Broer; 03-13-2013 at 02:24 PM.


  9. #9
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    My problems with air are that no matter what I use/do with air coolers, it still exhausts the heat into the room air supply which the A/C unit still has to move out of the room. And house A/C systems are expensive to replace when they get tired, not to mention the current they use in operation. Thus my push on the knowledge for the liquid cooling. However the air cooling is interesting, and for the majority of folks is the answer. :-)

  10. #10
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    My only problems with cooling are in high summer, when temperatures can rise above 30 degrees centigrade for a few days (30ºC is equal to 86ºF). Most of the times temperature is far cooler though.
    At the moment it is still winter here and the combined cooling from my computer workroom raises temperature in that room to about 20 degrees, one degree above the rest of the house.
    A mere open window is enough to dump eventual excess heat during summer. During wintertime I let the door of the computer room open to let eventual excess heat into the house.
    We have no A/C, nor do we need one.
    Last edited by Dirk Broer; 03-13-2013 at 10:30 PM.


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