Gadgetory

a long while back I made this video looking into whether or not premium PC cooling fans were worth it this raised another question however one that some people are actually rather uncomfortable discussing is aftermarket CPU cooling even worth it I understand why this can be a difficult conversation people often don't like pert their purchasing decisions coming to question but in 2015 with much of the hardware development world going to less power draw and lower thermal output is it needed anymore let's find out and stay tuned for a course for gaming update coming soon where we'll explore how many CPU cores are really needed for gaming in 2015 the Coolermaster Nova touch tkl utilizes exclusive hybrid capacitive switches powered by topor and is now available at a more affordable price click now to learn more many a time in the history of PC builders a young Jimmy or Jane has sat at the checkout window wondering if they should spring for a better CPU cooler at the cost of a weaker component elsewhere hours have been spent researching this question but to no avail whatever shall they do if they're not interested in overclocking or aesthetics the obvious answer is just to stick with a stock cooler and invest elsewhere but if they want to overclock is it worth it how much is worth it there are a lot of potential avenues to look at this from when we won't be exploring is custom water cooling loops they are too expensive although there are some exceptions they perform better although there's some exceptions you get the point essentially custom water cooling is an extreme variable because it's well custom there's a metric ton of benefits to custom water cooling but many of them come at the cost of well cost at PAX East 2015 under the top 5 gaming desktops of the Intel booth video one of the system's shown in that video the main gear one had around a thousand dollars in just fittings alone now I know not everyone's doing that and if you are you know what that's freakin awesome and you're interested in that that's great please place your build in the build log section of the forum because it's probably going to be beautiful and I'm probably going to want to see it but this video may not really cater to you I personally water cool custom water cooling but I spent about a quarter of that on my whole setup including all the fittings and everything and I expect most people that are newly getting into water cooling will be getting top-of-the-line processors anyway so the whole is it worth it question is less likely applicable to them because improved water cooling is directly on their cpu performance upgrade path now if someone is getting a processor that does have potential upgrades now we're talking we will be testing as a cooler master t4 in order to represent a fairly average example of a low to mid range air cooler at about 30 ish dollars and a cooler master sidon which will represent the dual 120 millimeter rad and the similarly performing large dual air tower coolers like the Noctua and HD 15 at around 100 ish dollars last and definitely least in terms of performance is the general run of the mill no frills Intel stock cooler which is bundled with your processor the antagonist in the story will be the Intel 4690k and extremely commonly recommended and purchased processor that we'll be testing these coolers at three different settings one is the stock setting of a 3.5 gigahertz base frequency and a 3.9 gigahertz boost frequency and next is a slight gigahertz overclock of all cores running at 4 gigahertz but a pretty hefty voltage increase running at one point to 5 volts and lastly it will run into another slightly higher frequency of 4.3 hereit's and a heavier voltage increase of 1.3 5 volts please note that you could run these voltages and get much higher clock speeds I was simply cranking up the voltage to turn up the heat next up we have the CMT 4 and before you comment down below that I'm a horrible human being because I didn't use the hyper 212 Evo I know I'm sorry we somehow don't have one in office I honestly have no idea how linus has gone this long without having one in stock yeah anyways it's slightly more expensive and perform slightly better than the t4 and as you can see the general message would have we been somewhat similar overall the 1.35 volts overclock resulting in a 95 degree processor and some throttling wasn't great but this small upgrade allowed us to run at one point to 5 volts at essentially the same temperatures as the stock cooler at stock speeds and voltages on the CPU a solid improvement for just 28 bucks lastly we have the side into 40 this cooler was able to achieve a very nice stock speed load temperature of 47 degrees and tied the stock coolers stock clock thermal output but at one point three five volts giving you a lot more room to play with but the side 240 has a really awkward price position when compared to a 4690k because of 4690k is 240 dollars and a 4790k which is hyper-threaded and has a much higher boost clock with 4.4 gigahertz it's $340 exactly a hundred dollars more very similar pricing to a side into 40 in conclusion is it worth it I'll give you a solid maybe from the raw performance numbers it looks like if you don't want to overclock don't upgrade if you want to overclock but don't have a ton of budget get something like a hyper 212 Evo if you have a fair amount of budget upgrade your processor or if you're already at the top of line just get whatever your budget allows but that's not the whole story either is it some people care a lot about aesthetics I could call them shallow but I do as well maybe I'm shallow I don't know and then there is some solace junkies as well I know people that run custom water cooling setups for just their entire systems and don't even have an overclock they just do it so they can turn their fans and their pumps super low and run their computer at a whisper-quiet level what solution is best for you for me it's custom water cooling I've had a bunch of my kit for a while so upgrading doesn't really cost that much money I really like the aesthetics and it's just fun are you someone who's going to try save a bunch of money and not buy an aftermarket cooler are you going to go for like the affordable but kind of badass get a little bit more out of your processor range or are you pretty much already up there and just want something cool and easy let me know in the comments down below or even if your custom water cooling which is super vast comments down below over on the forum either one totally works let me know also down below this video you'll be able to see a linked for shirts that are definitely not a twitch plays pokemon shirt although twitchplayspokemon was awesome nostalgia anyways over on the forum as well there should be a support us link where you can change things like your Amazon affiliate links to our affiliate codes so we get a small kickback whenever you buy things over there which is actually super helpful and there's tons of other ways to support Linus media group as well like going on the forum or watching videos anyways thanks for watching I'll see you guys next time