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New PC :D -- cooler & mobo advice

sonofsanta

By sonofsanta
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sonofsanta

sonofsanta

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So, after recent good news, I finally have pennies to spend on a new PC :D

 

I'm more or less up to speed on everything I need to know, and have the build all but picked out, but there's two particular areas I wanted to ask the hivemind about.

 

CPU Cooler

I'm not intending on overclocking (not even buying the K chip) because it's not worth my time or money, tbh. I'm past that stage, and all the worrying about stability and squeezing out the last drop of performance. I'm more concerned with noise than performance, although the two are related.

 

I gather that the Noctua coolers are more or less the gold standard, but if I'm not overclocking, is the NH-U12S overkill? The Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO gets a lot of good reviews for half the price, and an i5-6600 at stock shouldn't be difficult to cool. Basically I want permission to save the £25 and get the 212, so just let me know I'm not an idiot for this.

 

Motherboard

There are forever and always too many bloomin' motherboards to keep up with, so recommendations for a good value ATX LGA1151 motherboard are welcome. Single GPU only (I did Crossfire once, never again) and no particular fancy features--just something reliable and with decent connectivity. I've always gone with Asus in the past, but reviews online seem less than complimentary about their current crop of boards, so I'm open to Gigabyte and MSI as well. It looks like there's lots of good boards at £120, but if I can get something good enough for £90-£100 it's all money saved (that I might spend on bumping up to a 500GB SSD).

 

Any other thoughts on the build, let me know; I'm going to move my 680 over from my current PC (good enough, esp. at 1680 x 1050) and PCI-E SSDs don't seem worth the premium, sadly, so I'm pretty settled on everything else, but there's a fair chance I've missed something.

 

Cheers, y'all.

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sonofsanta

sonofsanta

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That's the 212 cooler I was thinking of :) glad it's working out for someone, + points to its column!

 

That mobo is Z97 though, for the older gen of Intel CPUs--I'll need a Z170 (or H, conceivably, but it seems like it's worth paying for the Z chipset).

ICTDirect_Dave

ICTDirect_Dave

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That's the 212 cooler I was thinking of :) glad it's working out for someone, + points to its column!

 

That mobo is Z97 though, for the older gen of Intel CPUs--I'll need a Z170 (or H, conceivably, but it seems like it's worth paying for the Z chipset).

 

Or you could save some money and get one of my delightful HP Z420s with 3.2GHx Hex Core Xeon E5 ;)

DalekSec

DalekSec

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That's the 212 cooler I was thinking of :) glad it's working out for someone, + points to its column!

 

That mobo is Z97 though, for the older gen of Intel CPUs--I'll need a Z170 (or H, conceivably, but it seems like it's worth paying for the Z chipset).

 

As much as I love the cooler it is big and bit ugly (Plus goes over RAM Slots so would need to buy low profile ram if I were to expand) i'm thinking of replacing it with something like this

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cooler-Master-RL-S12V-24PK-R2-Silencio-Radiator/dp/B00N93KIES/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1461065741&sr=8-1&keywords=cpu+water+cooler

DalekSec

DalekSec

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Hasnt the world moved on from these huge motherboards and coolers?

 

I've got an i5 NUC and its awesome ;)

 

Just checked a new i5 NUC, benchmark is around 3kish, my older 4th gen i7 is 10k. Think i'll stick to my huge motherboards and coolers!

ICTDirect_Dave

ICTDirect_Dave

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Where's the fun in that? I need the mad cackling moment of booting it for the first time and getting to shout "IT LIVES!"

 

Watercooling is a whole world of faff I don't need, and doesn't necessarily run any quieter either.

 

Agreed! I love building my own systems, but I wouldn't be a proper salesman if I didn't try and peddle my wares to all and sundry would I? :)

 

I've got a corsair closed loop liquid cooling system. It's great, but definitely not quiet!

 

Your build looks pretty solid though. I have the same 27" BenQ 2K monitor and I love it. Depending on how much memory your 680 has however, it might be worth looking at a new card and keeping that one for physX perhaps?

sonofsanta

sonofsanta

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Agreed! I love building my own systems, but I wouldn't be a proper salesman if I didn't try and peddle my wares to all and sundry would I? :)

 

I've got a corsair closed loop liquid cooling system. It's great, but definitely not quiet!

 

Your build looks pretty solid though. I have the same 27" BenQ 2K monitor and I love it. Depending on how much memory your 680 has however, it might be worth looking at a new card and keeping that one for physX perhaps?

 

If I do go for a new monitor as well (not sure yet, I don't need one...) then I'll probably get the 25" Dell, actually; would fit on my desk a bit better, the lag was a bit better than the BenQ, and the colour accuracy & quality of the Dells is legendary. I'll probably spend more time sorting photos than I will playing games these days, so these things matter :/

 

No point in buying a new GPU when the next-gen--with its new 16nm process and shiny HBM2--is so close. Maybe in a year or two :)

LeMarchand

LeMarchand

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CPU Cooler

I'm not intending on overclocking (not even buying the K chip) because it's not worth my time or money, tbh. I'm past that stage, and all the worrying about stability and squeezing out the last drop of performance. I'm more concerned with noise than performance, although the two are related.

 

That was my feeling when I did mine. Just use the stock cooler that came with my i7-4790 and never noticed any ridiculous temps. Highest I've noticed of late was 41C.

 

 

I've got the https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00K8K992W (was almost 1/2 that price at the time) and it's great. Though, as above, not seen a need for a supercooler yet. Might have to stress the CPU at the weekend...

 

Best thing i did was to ditch my 1150 MSI motherboard, it was ruddy awful. I gambled on it as it was cheap, and lost. Could not possibly recommend them.

Gigabyte all the way! :)

 

No problems with my MSI so far. Plus it looks cool. :p My case is Gigabyte, though.

sonofsanta

sonofsanta

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Do you have noise concerns with the stock cooler? It does a good enough job but can be a tiny bit noisy on occasion

 

Dunno, not got it yet :) but stock coolers have never been up to much in the past, and it seems like a proper cooler does a much better job.

DalekSec

DalekSec

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Dunno, not got it yet :) but stock coolers have never been up to much in the past, and it seems like a proper cooler does a much better job.

 

Agreed my i7k was running at 90C idle with stock cooler, and around 30-40C with the 212 cooler, best £30 I spent

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Rob_D

Rob_D

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I'm debating one of the corsair H-series AIOs, largely for aesthetic reasons TBH.

 

One thing to consider: If you get a cooler that takes standard sized fans then you could replace the fan with something like a noctua or corsair SP series for, if not better, quieter performance (should you require it).

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Garacesh

Garacesh

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All-in-one water cooling options are very reasonably priced these days, I don't really see much of a point of going for 'standard' (i.e. non-liquid) coolers these days. Granted, my H100i GTX is a little on the over-spec'd side, but Corsair's H-series are great, I've never had an issue, and I've heard positive things about Cooler Master's closed loop units (though have no experience with them as I'm kinda brand loyal to Corsair lol)
arwen

arwen

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Agreed my i7k was running at 90C idle with stock cooler, and around 30-40C with the 212 cooler, best £30 I spent

 

Think your stock cooler wasn't seated correctly if it was 90°C at idle! My i5 sits around 35°C at idle, max I've seen it at is 82°C under load, and that is enclosed in a sound proofed box :-) An i7 should not be idling much higher.

 

As for aftermarket coolers. I've always liked Arctic Freezers. Powerful, quite and great value for money. Only reason I don;t have one on my pc is cause I forgot to add it to my order. So I stuck the stock one on just to run it for a month to test. It's doing better than I expected so I've just left it. May eventually change over to a freezer.

Motherboards, Asus and Asrock are my preferences. Gigabyte is the 3rd choice. Just don't go for the base models of any of them and they are all pretty good though.

DalekSec

DalekSec

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Think your stock cooler wasn't seated correctly if it was 90°C at idle! My i5 sits around 35°C at idle, max I've seen it at is 82°C under load, and that is enclosed in a sound proofed box :-) An i7 should not be idling much higher.

 

It was seated correctly, I think it was more due to my old cases very poor air flow! under load it would be on 100C, since new case and fan it has dropped a lot and allowed me to be able to overclock, under load while overclocking its around 60C max

Homer

Homer

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Must be poor airflow then, I've built 4 machines with Ivy Bridge i7's in with stock coolers and idle temps have always been around 35-39c and load around 50-60c and they never seem to make much noise either!

 

Just rebuilt 2 machines with 6th gen i5's and even lower temps on stock cooler.

 

If I were you, make sure the case has good airflow and leave the stock cooler alone unless you can see a reason to upgrade it

DalekSec

DalekSec

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Another reason I don't like stock coolers, and this might sound sad. They just don't look cool! The Cool Master 212 is big and bulky but still looks 10x better than the stock on. When someone looks at my PC they always go WOW WHATS THAT THING THERE! And I want my PCs to have the 'Wow' factor. Same with if I am going down the water cool route for CPU it will be one with LEDs on because it just looks better. The stock on looks boring and thus for £30 I would buy the 212 even if it kept it at the same temp as the stock one.
sonofsanta

sonofsanta

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I am getting a proper case without a window, because I want it to be quiet, and flashing LEDs right by my head (my PC is on the desk) will only infuriate & distract me :)

 

Reckon I'll get the Coolermaster cooler because it's great value for money and should be noticeably quieter than stock, but I still have no idea on motherboard. Does there honestly need to be this many models from each manufacturer. Why are they doing this to me.

DalekSec

DalekSec

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Yeah my PC is bit noisy, but the noise doesn't bother me as I use noise cancelling 7.1 surround sound headphones, blocks out the noise of the PC/Doorbell/Phone/Burglar/David Cameron and most importantly my brother

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