Heatsink advice please?

Kur4mA

Hi guys,

I'm looking for a new heatsink as I never bothered to upgrade after my last build from HWVS. I'm looking for something fairly quiet that will keep her cool too. I haven't been keeping up to speed on heatsinks lately so wouldn't have a clue on price point or anything. Any advice? Here's my build:

Cooler Master 690 II Advanced Midi-Tower PURE Black
Corsair TX750W 750 Watt
8GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 RipjawsX
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3, Intel P55, ATX, DDR3, PCI-Express
Intel Core i5-760 Box 8192Kb, LGA1156
LG GH22NS50 SATA 22x Super-Multi DVD Rewriter with SecurDisc™
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1000GB, SATA II (HD103SJ)
ATI Radeon 6950 HD 850MHz 2GB PCI-E HDMI Twin Frozr III PE
Samsung SyncMaster P2450H
OCZ AGT3-25SAT3-120G Agility 3 120GB SATA III 2.5 inch SSD

I'm also thinking of upgrading my graphics card soon as I'm not that happy with the 6950 anymore. (I wanna run GW2 on full!) Maybe a bit of overclocking too.

Procrastastudy

Any of the 1155 coolers will work - much discussion to be found in this forum. I assume it was a CPU cooler you are looking for?

Kur4mA

I just saw this Corsair A50 suggested in another thread but to be honest reading about the noise of the fan I'll be steering clear:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1534/7/

uncle_sam_ie

How much did you want to spend?

Kur4mA

Anything up to around 70-80 Euro. I was just looking at the Corsair H70 or H80 and am quite impressed by those. I didn't realise watercooling had come so far. I've always been very wary of it before now.

uncle_sam_ie

Go with the Noctua NH-D14 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKHRPJfZ5Y8 or the Corair H100. I have the NH-D14. It's a fantastic product. Although it looks big and awkward, it's very very easy to install.

Kur4mA

I think I will go for the H100 purely because of how quiet it runs. I can install it in the bottom of my CM 690 II if I remove the HDD cage.

*EDIT*
Here's an example I found of one installed in the case:

Procrastastudy

By quiet do you mean ear bleedingly loud?

H100 is not quiet out of the box - if you replace the fans its okay. The other option is to run them on very low - which makes it a mediocre cooler at best.

I'm not saying don't buy one just expect to pay around €150 all done.

Kur4mA

I have a couple of 120mm fans knocking about, 1 of which is a Noctua. I'll swap the fans on the H100 if it's too loud.

Tea_Bag

the h80 and h100 have probably the loudest fans money can buy, unless you pull a Delta from an old DELL PC

they shift uber amounts of air, but you pay the price.

d14 will be better and much, much quieter, but won't look as good.

if you're willing to spend money, the gentle typhoons are the best fans on the market. you could probably get away with using your exhaust fan on your rig with the h80 and you won't lose too much performance.

Kur4mA

I'm reading more and more about the D14. It's an impressive piece of kit but by far the largest heatsink I've ever seen so a bit daunting for me. Will it fit into my midi-tower and any potential airflow problems?

Procrastastudy

kyub wrote: »

I'm reading more and more about the D14. It's an impressive piece of kit but by far the largest heatsink I've ever seen so a bit daunting for me. Will it fit into my midi-tower and any potential airflow problems?

Fitting is one issue but the way its designed is pretty snazzy as it will take air though the case and straight out the exhaust.

uncle_sam_ie

Fitting the NH-D14 is easy. This is what it's like in my case.

Kur4mA

I've checked and it should definitely fit.

Thx for the pic uncle sam, it doesn't look bad at all! I think I'll pick one up.

5uspect

I squeezed an NH-D14 into my Antec 300. Lovely heatsink.