Gadgetory

over the years companies like AMD and Intel have really loosened up their panties when it comes to the subject of overclocking and they've even gone as far as to sell overclocking specific models of their popular CPUs like the K and X series on Intel and the famous black edition on AMD but of course the added power and performance of overclocking your CPU comes with the trade off more heat so with the hundreds of messages sitting in my various inboxes from viewers asking which cooler is right for them I decided to go ahead and take the hint and bring you my updated version of how to choose the right cooler for your system EVGA ACX 2.0 cooler with its three phase 6 slot motor 11 swept fan blades and double ball bearing design offers reduced power noise and thermals for the optimum gaming experience click the link in the description to learn more and whether you're overclocking AMD or Intel there's one thing that will never change the fanboys are real wait that's the wrong point still true with more overclocking means you need more voltage which of course means you have more heat and you need more cooling capacity now there are many kinds of coolers on the market ranging from the tame to the extreme you've got your air coolers you've got your sealed all-in-one water coolers your custom loops not to mention the more exotic cooling options hey focus exotic cooling like phase-change peltor is liquid nitrogen etc etc but today we're going to focus on the main three that actually matter to the average consumer now those being air cooling sealed water loops and custom water cooling loops now to first understand which is right for you you're going to have to understand the pros and cons of each type of cooler so let's go ahead and start with something simple let's start with air cooling now air cooling has quite the range of cooling intensity itself with basic coolers like the legendary cooler master hyper 212 all the way up to extreme coolers like the Noctua nhd 14 which I might add the nhd 14 is actually matched and surpassed some all-in-one coolers when it comes to various temperature tests now the benefit to air cooling is that they are simple to install there nearly maintenance-free now I say nearly because you do have to open up your case and blow out dust and cat hair back hair whatever else may have worked its way into these tiny little fins but probably the most beneficial part to cooling is the air cooling is the fact that they have absolutely zero moving parts to wear out and therefore last for years and years now in fact the fans are likely to die before anything else regarding the cooler and they're usually relatively inexpensive with like I mentioned earlier the cooler hyper master 212 having legendary price to performance ratio no guys that is not a paid product placement just go look at new egg reviews or Amazon and with over 7,000 reviews on new egg alone then overall five egg rating to boot no other cooler has achieved that level of success not to mention it's like 35 bucks on Amazon now really there are only a couple drawbacks to air cooling typically to get really good performance the towers can be pretty massive well not that massive but sometimes they're really good air coolers on the market can interfere with some case panels I actually ran into this problem earlier in the year when I was building my wife system which meant that I had to actually switch out the cooler for one that wasn't quite so tall now the other downside is sometimes in order to get the higher cooling capacity with higher overclocks you have to ramp up the fan speed quite a bit leading to a noisy PC fortunately the improvement of heat pipe and vapour technology this is becoming less of an issue and you can now get some pretty decent temperatures even with low rpm fans on air coolers like the be quiet fans now one of the last drawbacks to air coolers is that they can interfere with the height of some ram on the market making it impossible to install certain dims on your motherboard as gaming and high performance ran continues to push the limits they can get pretty warm so manufacturers have started beefing up the heat sinks on RAM as well which can definitely get in the way of some air coolers now moving on to all one coolers also known as sealed coolers these have really gained popularity over the past few years with brands like Corsair and cooler master and NZXT helping to bring these options to market now in reality they are just like custom water cooling loops and that they share the same basic properties they both have pumps CPU water blocks tubing which move a non-corrosive coolant over the CPU moving the heat and transferring out of the case through a radiator but the main difference between custom loops and sealed coolers is that they are much more compact they're no more difficult to install the air coolers and they are completely maintenance-free well of course with the same exception as air coolers you've got to blow out that pesky cat or back hair but you don't have to worry about opening up most of them and draining the fluid but of course there are some exceptions to that rule typically hybrid all-in-one coolers like the Swift Tec h2 20x offer expandability which also introduces the maintenance schedule but other than that they are pretty hands-off when it comes to maintenance now another key benefit is that they do come in all sorts of sizes you have single 120 millimeter fans dual 120 dual 140 and now even some of them come in three hundred and sixty millimeter variants but that can also lead to a little confusion about what size to get the basic rule of thumb in my book is get the biggest radiator that will fit in your case period now some of the drawbacks to sealed coolers is their additional moving parts specifically the pump now typically the most common part to fail is indeed the pump since they are often much smaller and much less robust designs then stand-alone pumps found in custom loops generally you only get about two to three years of constant used out of a sealed cooler before the pump starts making noise or grinding or dies altogether now something else that would be considered a drawback to sealed units is the fear of leaking and damaging your PC it's actually not that common to hear about leaking in all-in-one coolers like this but it has happened in the past so it's a risk that you take and it's definitely something you have to keep in mind now the last thing to mention is that they are often a little more expensive than air coolers but they usually yield a higher overclock with lower average temperatures now let's talk about my personal favorite and that being custom water cooling loops it's backwards custom water cooling loops they offer a ton of options tons of custom abysm customizability you can cool just your CPU or maybe add a video card or two or three to your loop and get a crap ton of extra gaining performance heck you can eat water-cooler RAM and your motherboard in many instances as well you can choose how big or how small your loop will be but of course the Moore's radiator surface area means overall lower temperatures allowing the building to get much closer to mV and temperature than the aforementioned cooling scenarios but not only that if you oversize your radiator it means you can slow down your fans to aid any more silent PC configuration a custom fluids have also mean that you can color match your fluid to your system for that nice unique build custom aesthetic while using clear tubing and over all the components just look a whole lot better but unfortunately the list of drawbacks is just as long as the list of pros while building your custom loop parts the list can become very overwhelming very quickly having to make sure you have plenty of the right fittings the right tubing while also ensuring that they are compatible with each other measuring proper fit for radiator size in your case will it fit in your case will it clear your components will it hit your motherboard where's the pump going to go where's the reservoir going to go how are you going to fill it how you going to drain it not to mention each and every part available has a metric shit-ton of available sizes and brands to choose from if you ever thought picking your first PC parts list was hard wait until you try to pick your very first custom loop parts list I've been building custom loops for over a decade and I still sometimes forget apart or accidentally order mismatched parts oops it actually happened on skunkworks if you saw the build log now fortunately some companies like X SPC Alpha cool phobia and EK water blocks have taken the guesswork out of the equation by creating custom loops in a box where they pretty much take all the necessary parts throw them in a box and sell it as a kit this is nice because it means that you know you didn't forget something all you have to do is pick the right GPU block if you want to include your graphics card to the loop add a couple of fittings for your block and it's easy right well you just hold your horses there it's not quite that simple now still you have to install the thing and just because the parts were putting a box for you doesn't take the extra work of installing it out of the equation and on top of that these custom kits in a box never include any method of draining your loop for maintenance so I guess that's a pretty good segue into the biggest drawback of loop's you have to maintain the thing now typically I drain and fill my loops once a year but with some fluids I drag a nice nano fluid you can actually leave it in your system for up to two years without any issues usually premix fluids have an anti corrosive property to them as well as growth inhibitors so you don't get algae this technology has really expanded over the past decade making things a lot easier but of course you could still use a simple distilled water mix with a silver coil to keep costs down and just drain the fluid every six months but lastly the obvious drawback is the price custom loops start at a couple hundred bucks and can easily exceed $1,000 or more depending on your level of hardware that you choose this means there is a definite diminishing return on your investment when it comes compared to non custom loops and overall temperatures and you should never opt to spend more money on a custom water cooling loop if it means you take away from raw performance by cheeping out on your CPU or GPU just for the sake of affording a custom loop and that makes zero sense let alone two cents see what I did there but trust me when I say that there is nothing quite like the feeling of building your own custom water loop and making that personal touch and aesthetic feel of your system and making it your own so now just to recap I didn't fart that was my chair so just to recap air coolers they're cheap maintenance free and the heat sink never wears out but usually they're a little more noisy under load conditions lower overall overclocks and height requirements make height or high-end air coolers incompatible with some cases and memory now sealed units offer better overclocks usually lower noise and are maintenance free but usually at the sacrifice of operational life with a small risk of linking while being a tad bit more costly than air cooling and of course custom water cooling loops offer a custom look color matching better over clocks with temps reaching as low as ambient temperature but part selection can be a complete bitch much more expensive than lower perform and a lower performance return on your investment but it looks cool so who cares go ahead and mortgage the house and buy a custom water cooling loop that's my advice well there you go guys J is two cents on air cooling versus sealed coolers versus custom water cooling loops hopefully this video wasn't too long and it helps some of you decide which cooler is best for you if you're interested in building a custom loop and check out this playlist here somewhere on the screen where I have put some of my water cooling videos including tutorials on how to do your first water cooling loop how to install it and if you feel that there are more pros and cons that I may have missed in this video let us know down in the comments but please keep it civil I know it's the Internet and I know it's hard but hey at least try once again guys thanks for your support your support means an awful ton to me and as always guys I'll see you in the next one take care