![]() With all of that information in mind, I’ve produced a “decoder ring” which should give you a clear idea of the differences between all of the coolers we have available. Haswell-E chips, on the other hand, can dissipate as much as 300W when overclocked, but because they have lower heat density and better thermal transfer characteristics than non-E chips do, they can eke more performance out of a better cooler. ![]() So even though an overclocked Core i7-4790K may only dissipate about 140W of heat – essentially where Intel’s Haswell-E processors start – characteristics of the chip itself prevent it from dissipating any more heat than that, regardless of the cooler used. And it shouldn’t that heat wall shows up at roughly the highest amount of voltage you’d want to put into an Intel chip for daily use. Getting a bigger cooler can get you lower noise levels, but if your core voltage is already at 1.35V, odds are good a beefier cooler isn’t going to get you more overclocking headroom. But different chips have different thermal characteristics and produce different amounts of heat.įor example, Intel’s Haswell (non-E) and Devil’s Canyon processors can hit a heat wall where they simply can’t transfer more heat into the cooler. If you’re not planning on doing any serious overclocking and not using one of AMD’s 220W processors, you can actually likely get by with even an entry-level Hydro Series H55 or H60. Of course, what you’re cooling plays a big part in determining which cooler you’ll need. So while it’s entirely possible to have “overkill,” it’s also typically pretty safe to just buy the largest cooler we offer (that’s compatible with your case) since you will, if nothing else, reap lower noise levels. In our testing, we found that even an H80i GT can run with its fans on their minimum setting and keep a mighty Intel Core i7-5960X (at stock speeds) under 55C. The slower you run the fans, the quieter the cooler is. So how do you figure out which cooler to buy?įor starters, the larger the cooler you use, the slower you can run the fans. So healthy, in fact, that it may be a little bit difficult to figure out which cooler you want or even need. Having been in the cooling business for a few years now, at Corsair we’ve developed a pretty healthy lineup of liquid CPU coolers.
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