I’m using a cryorig h7
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So someone beat me to it. And apparently my theory is correct. Insane cooling by using a water block directly connected to the die. They ran the CPU at 5.3 ghz and 1.5 volts @ 70c temps. Curious if a Noctua directly on the die would have similar results?
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No, didn’t make it this time either…! 
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After a couple of AIO liquid coolers for two years, I went back to Air. It’s simple, its reliable and risk free. I still have my AIO 1080 that came with the water cooler. No problems. I just don’t see the justification for all the hype of water. I am way beyond “makes my pc purty”.
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So, what kind of cooler do you use now?
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It’s sunday afternoon…
I’m having a beer, waiting for the roasted lamb to reach 68°C.
Just having a discussion with my friends (that’s you guys).
This is a metal heatsink, with a fan. Commonly referred to as an ‘aircooler’.
This is a metal radiator, with a fan, connected to an array of so-called heat pipes that contains a cooling liquid that evaporates into gas and is cooled to liquid again. It is commonly referred to as an ‘air cooler’.
This is a metal radiator with fans and a pump on metal base, connected to the CPU heatspreader, that circulates a cooling liquid through the system. It’s commonly referred to as a ‘AIO’ or All In One, cooler.
If you put the pump as a separate unit and use a coolant reservoir, and connect the hoses yourself, it’s referred to as a ‘Liquid cooler’.
My point.
My point here is that they are all Air cooled.
Three of these contain a liquid coolant.
They all have their purpose. There are advantages and disadvantages with all systems.
Pumps can stop working, as can fans. Liquid can leak, etc.
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HPN’s I3-4160 uses the stock intel fan cooler, and it works well enough, along with some good case fans. When I upgrade it, it will need more horsepower in the cooling department though. Intel also makes one of these that is giant, for LGA1151.
Relative size reference. The plastic push-pin locks are AWFUL, I must add.
I didn’t realize Noctua’s were anything more than a gigantic plain heatsink. The More You Know! Ugly, yet extremely functional. I don’t like that the larger units block accessibility. Then there is my fear (call it irrational as it probably is) and dislike of hanging such a huge weight off the motherboard.
I would like to know, from a Noctua owner - how low can you run all of your fans & the resulting noise. Can you mount it vertically oriented to push hot air up & out of the case?
Simple, clean, highly effective, quiet. Hence, my choice. I wouldn’t hand one of these off to someone that isn’t tech savvy and can correctly diagnose a pump failure.
A friend of mine swore that anything less than a custom liquid circuit was a waste of time. While he was re-cutting tubing to be perfectly straight so it didn’t leak, checking all his fitting, getting distilled water, adding anti-microbial agents and sometimes waiting to have the money to buy parts or for them to be shipped…I was gaming & enjoying my PC.
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The Corsair H110i was my first foray into liquid cooling. Worked great! Still does, actually.
Add a home built stow-away simulator box to that, and you’ll never have time to fly anything…! 
For the tinkerers amongst us, liquid systems can be a lot of fun. Totally unnecessary, for the most part. For me it was the fear of not getting good enough airflow through the computer compartment, of the SimBox, as I tried to make it as small as possible. Totally unfounded fears, as it turned out. But, good fun building the damn thing.
I recently saw a pic of a liquid system that used regular brass water pipes. Looked incredibly steampunk!
We might as well be fair and admit that most things in life are unnecessary! 
My H150i Pro can take my i9-9900k running Prime 95 small FFT (max heat) test at ~220W CPU power so long as it’s not on “Quiet” mode but I haven’t run that for more than a couple minutes. Quiet mode has a low max-rpm pump/fan cap. Balanced runs much quicker - iCue doesn’t allow custom pump profiles so I took balanced and set the fans on a custom curve to stay really quiet at idle but spin up faster than temperature rise.
Brass pipe…so do we add failed solder joints to the list of things to to wrong?
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My i7 6700k was on a Corsair AIO and while it performed admirably with no issues, for my 9700k I went back to air cooled with a Noctua DH15 as my case is ginormous. My reasons for going back was just overall simplicity and less risk of a pump failure.
If you ignore the click bait-ish title of the video, the first couple of minutes explains what @Troll has been talking about with the Noctua coolers. He also mentions how long periods of time at high temps can reduce the cooling effectiveness of the Noctua type coolers, as the liquid in the heat pipes can get stuck in vapor form. Did not know that. although I’m sure that’s a very extreme case.
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The difference is that in case of the Noctua and other so called “air coolers”, the radiator is thermally tightly coupled to the CPU. If the fan fails, the radiator still provides a lot of thermal capacity.
In case of a so called “water cooled” system, there’s not only the additional complexity of having a pump and liquid circle (a liquid that has to be chemically kept from fouling, btw.), but when the pump fails, the thermal capacity of what remains coupled to the CPU temperature is far less.
Now given the self monitoring including emergency shut down functions that modern CPUs have, this is a bit of a moot point, but it still applies.
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Passive cooling, is the term iiirc.
A very good point to bring up.
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Not exactly, passive cooling doesn’t rely on the thermal capacity of the heatsink, it relies on convection of the air driven by the heat of the heatsink, where active cooling forces the air to flow over the heatsink by means of a fan.
In case of an overclocked CPU, this may not be enough to stay below the threshold of what can be considered safe. Additionally, you may drive the heatsink into a temperature range where the heatpipes stop working, which would drastically decrease its efficiency. The thermal capacity of the heatsink just means that it will heat up much slower than the comparatively small block of a water cooled system, giving the system more time to shut down before the CPU fries itself.
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I ran a Noctua N15 with a single (large) fan that came with it in between the two banks of fins. With both my 2700k and then 4790k overclocked to 4.6GHz and 4.8GHz respectively, I never had temps over 55 deg C under normal usage, and the fan was effectively silent at around 600 rpm.
Whilst running Prime95 (I think?) for stability testing this could push to 65 deg C, and under those conditions the fan was audible but still quieter then the one on the power supply (went up to around 1200rpm I think).
I don’t think you can mount the fan horizontally, but in practice as long as you ensure good air flow through the case with a fan at entrance and exit it’s not a problem. The fan speed curve was fully customisable on my motherboard so it was easy to control unnecessary fan noise. I must say that the fan that came with the cooler pushes a lot of air and is silent up to around 1000 rpm I think, an amazing piece of design.
In terms of the weight of the unit, it is large and heavy. I was worried about hanging it on the motherboard when I ordered it, however the custom bracket that comes with it is well designed and distributes the weight to holes on the motherboard so no pressure is put on the CPU socket. It also makes it easy to get the unit parallel to the chip for even cooling. I never had a problem.
I really cannot recommend the Noctua N15 enough, and no they are not sponsoring this post 
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Ah, I was hoping there may have been a way to rotate it 90°. My thought being that the rear of most cases is a single fan, the front two or three and the top also two or three - so the top would make an easier exit for hot air.
Ah, my bad, I misunderstood. Yes, you have the choice which orientation to install the unit. In practice, it would only fit in to my case one way as the RAM slots were next to the CPU socket and the RAM modules would conflict with the heat pipes in two orientations, and the power supply conflicted in the third. TLDR It depends on you’re hardware / case design.
I’m not advocating A particular cooling solution. As I wrote earlier, all these cooling solutions have their advantages and disadvantages.
I’m just at odds with how we label these solutions, which again is that point I’m trying to make
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Cooler Master Ma 610p is my air cooler. It’s got 6 pipes and is gigantic. I live alone and never worry about pc noise. My fans are all 120 mil. They run slow enough to be quiet. But 8 of them can make a buzz. I play in VR or w headsets. Engine noise in game drowns out any fan noise.
BTW I didnt know “Air” coolers had liquid inside.
Good day
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Well, all radiators are dependent upon airflow to cool down, so…
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