11 replies to this topic

[Staplebeater]

I am currently running a coolermaster hyper 212 on my i5 2500k and am thinking of upgrading to a AIO liquid cooler but am not sure which to go with.

I have been pretty happy with my coolermaster so was thinking of the
seidon 240 m or 120 XL

The corsair H80i and H100i are also options.

Anyone had any experience or advice on these coolers

[Dragoon20005]

question before purchasing watercooler kits

do you intend to OC the CPU?

both Seidon 240M and 120XL are great close loop coolers but you need to factor the current size of your casing

the 240M need to be mounted near the top of the chassis or possible the rear if you have space to place 2 120mm fans


do your measurements and see if the casing could fit either both water coolers

[Narcissistic Martyr]

I recommend that you consider the Thermaltake Water2.0 Extreme. It's one of the few AIOs that can cool better than the NH-D14 air cooler.

[Dragoon20005]

take your pick

it still boils down to if your current casing could fit the radiators

http://www.newegg.co...202.0%20extreme

http://www.newegg.co...0seidon%20120xl

http://www.newegg.co...20seidon%20240m

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835181031

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835181017

[Staplebeater]

I am overclocking and I have coolermaster HAF 912 case that has spots to mount the 240 radiator on top

[SIN Deacon]

Depending on what your setup is and how you have it all organized, top mounted radiators CAN be a good option. As most cases are designed to dissipate heat out the top of the chassis (Haf 912 for example, Makes sense since heat rises) your going to have the hot air from inside the case cooling your radiator. Typically with a few HDD's, a single video card and maybe some additional addons you probably won't have a problem at all. If you are looking into getting possibly a second card and you have more than 4+ drives with all of your expansion slots full, a rear mounted 120mm radiator pulling air from the back inwards over the radiator pushing the heat right out the top of the chassis could yield the same or better results

For example, the case previous to my Haf-x had my triple 120mm radiator mounted externally on the front of the case. Cool air was drawn over the rad and thrown inside the case. I only had three basic fans installed and I was at the point where I wanted some more cooling. The radiator is now mounted inside at the top of the case, in a push/pull fashion with 6 corsair high static pressure fans (3.1mm/h2o). With the two video cards now pushing the heat into the radiator, my three hard drives and the mobo, I didn't really gain a whole lot from what should be a superior setup. The video cards have dropped probably 30c with the increased airflow, but I only shaved about 2c off the CPU under full load (Something is better than nothing). Either way you will probably still get great results compared to the Evo 212, but keep future upgrades in mind for how you'd prefer to cool your cpu, and the internals.

As for choices, I have used all of the coolers except for the new thermaltake closed loops. They seem to be doing very well and from what I've seen online are doing better than the other closed loops. I've used all the h series coolers from corsair (haven't tried the new intelligent ones, but I always leave my pumps on full blast), Antec made a superior cpu hold down bracket if you ask me, but I think they have stopped production of those closed units. Zalman also makes a great closed loop unit. A friend of mine has a 3770k @ 4.7ghz on the zalman 310 double thick rad. Pushing around only 1.3v the lucky ***** was able to get 12+ hours stable in prime. Sometimes regardless of the cooling the chip just naturally wants more juice and produces more heat.

Hope this helps you out.

Edited by SIN Deacon, 01 August 2013 - 09:46 AM.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

SIN Deacon, on 01 August 2013 - 09:43 AM, said:

Depending on what your setup is and how you have it all organized, top mounted radiators CAN be a good option. As most cases are designed to dissipate heat out the top of the chassis (Haf 912 for example, Makes sense since heat rises) your going to have the hot air from inside the case cooling your radiator. Typically with a few HDD's, a single video card and maybe some additional addons you probably won't have a problem at all. If you are looking into getting possibly a second card and you have more than 4+ drives with all of your expansion slots full, a rear mounted 120mm radiator pulling air from the back inwards over the radiator pushing the heat right out the top of the chassis could yield the same or better results

For example, the case previous to my Haf-x had my triple 120mm radiator mounted externally on the front of the case. Cool air was drawn over the rad and thrown inside the case. I only had three basic fans installed and I was at the point where I wanted some more cooling. The radiator is now mounted inside at the top of the case, in a push/pull fashion with 6 corsair high static pressure fans (3.1mm/h2o). With the two video cards now pushing the heat into the radiator, my three hard drives and the mobo, I didn't really gain a whole lot from what should be a superior setup. The video cards have dropped probably 30c with the increased airflow, but I only shaved about 2c off the CPU under full load (Something is better than nothing). Either way you will probably still get great results compared to the Evo 212, but keep future upgrades in mind for how you'd prefer to cool your cpu, and the internals.

As for choices, I have used all of the coolers except for the new thermaltake closed loops. They seem to be doing very well and from what I've seen online are doing better than the other closed loops. I've used all the h series coolers from corsair (haven't tried the new intelligent ones, but I always leave my pumps on full blast), Antec made a superior cpu hold down bracket if you ask me, but I think they have stopped production of those closed units. Zalman also makes a great closed loop unit. A friend of mine has a 3770k @ 4.7ghz on the zalman 310 double thick rad. Pushing around only 1.3v the lucky ***** was able to get 12+ hours stable in prime. Sometimes regardless of the cooling the chip just naturally wants more juice and produces more heat.

Hope this helps you out.

If you're pushing hot hair back inside the case one should probably fab up a heat shroud that will take the air you blow in off your radiators and then channel to the exhaust so your case temps stay low

[SIN Deacon]

Yeahhhh.......

[SIN Deacon]

A rear mounted rad that is sucking air in from the outside (Not from inside the case and outwards) is using the external cool air to cool the radiator and not recycling hot air that is pouring out from your cards, hard drives and motherboard. With a fan mounted on the top of the chassis, along with the rest of the hot air rising towards the top, the top exhaust fans will work perfectly by sucking the air exhausted from the rad right out the top. Your better of using the air outside of your case rather than pulling in the air that was just exhausted off that other components inside the case to cool it.

If your talking about my old setup, theres a reason I said I transferred it all to the new case. I have received lower temps across the board with my Haf-X versus the Thermaltake kandalf lcs.

[Gremlich Johns]

I'm using the Antec 620 on an OC'd FX4100 (getting stable 4.2 GHz) - max temp seen thus far this year has been 53 deg C. Mounted in an Antec 900 case will lots of 120mm fans

[MadSavage]

Just use 15 doubles and a STD 325.

[Clit Beastwood]

MadSavage, on 05 August 2013 - 02:17 PM, said:

Just use 15 doubles and a STD 325.

Just be careful, anything with more than 4 cores carries a heat penalty.


In all seriousness though, I've got a 3770k and a corsair h60. At stock clocks, I'm getting to *maybe* 58c. If I want to overclock I already know it's not going to happen with this cooler, but I like it - it's quiet, I replaced the fans with sp120's in push/pull just for some peace of mind. I lapped the h60 down to .5 microns with chromium oxide (I run a knife sharpening service, so used diamond plates, then film, then crox on balsa) so it was mirror smooth, then installed with good thermal compound. Works great with the fans pulling air from inside out through the radiator.

I plan on upgrading to an h110 when I get the time to swap everything into a bigger case.