Best cooler for overclocking 4690k?

[pumpkinflavoredsewerrats]

Hi, I'm going to build a pc soon, and was wondering what would be the best cooler, air or water cooling is fine for the 4690k?
My budget is $80.

Specs:
CPU - i5 4690k
MOBO - Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 5 ATX LGA1150
GPU - Asus Strix GTX 970
Case - NZXT S340
PSU - EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply

 

[iron8orn]

Noctua NH-D14 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608018

 

[geofelt]

I have become a bit jaded on the subject of haswell cooling for overclocking.
How high you can OC is firstly determined by your luck in the bin lottery.
I had high expectations from the Devil's canyon parts and their better thermals.
I found out that the thermals really do not matter unless, perhaps, you are a competitive overclocker.
Haswell runs quite cool, that is, until you raise the voltage past 1.25v or so.
Once you go past 1.3v, then you really do need very good cooling to keep stress loads under say 85c.
But, the consensus is that voltages higher than 1.30 are not a good thing for 24/7 usage.
I have been unable to find any official Intel recommendation on what is a safe vcore limit.
If you are an enthusiast, you can go higher.
Even if you can handle the heat, how much do you really need that extra multiplier from say 4.4 to 4.6?
My thought is that it is better to use the exotic cooling funds for a quieter and less expensive air cooler.
I suggest a good tower air cooler like noctua or phanteks with 140mm fans.

 

[iron8orn]

That is why I say overclocking is going to become a memory soon.

A 14nm cpu is just not going to overclock that well unless they pull off something really innovative but they will have more power per ghz anyway.

Intel said Broadwell is giving over 10 percent better ipc without tweaking so I would expect at least 15 percent but it would really impressive to see like 25 percent.

 

[rubix_1011]

Overclocking is losing more and more viability as a true method to improve 'anything', really. A decade ago, it was a significant way to boost performance in a market that didn't offer hardware that could easily benefit most users.

Today, we have quad core CPUs that are multi-threaded and offer stock clocks in the mid-to-upper 3ghz range...well above what any user or power user needs for anything...including high-end gaming or computations. Graphics cards are released every 6 months that offer 10-15% performance improvements. Almost none of this is viable in any real-life situation and for anything that is production sensitive that benefits from these improvements should never be used with overclocking due to it's unstable nature over the course of time and hardware degradation. Much of overclocking anymore is about what score you can post in a signature line from a synthetic benchmark or a CPU-z snippet. There is rarely much of a real-world benefit with the power of hardware that currently exists and most end-user software that currently exists. Are there example cases for both? Yes, of course...but most of the overclocking argument still comes back to a number that you can say you reached. Like buying a Ferrari to commute to work...sure it will do 200mph, but where will you see this benefit?

That being said, overclocking is great, but there are so many people trying to do it simply for the signature line badge and less for the actual accomplishment and benefit of why they are attempting. You don't need a 4.7ghz quad core to post Facebook messages.

 

[synphul]

I couldn't agree more rubix_1011, that's exactly what's happening. Overclocking on older hardware was an elite status 'geeks' discovered as a way to get more bang for their buck and it's since become less of an art and more mainstream. People don't want to endure the process, they want cold hard input values to copy/paste. Architecture or methods need to change as it seems current tech is hitting a brick wall. Has been for years, that's why core speeds have remained around 3-4ghz. The silicon can't support any higher stably and must rely on refinement of coding methods. Not to mention the huge moves have been to smaller and smaller dies and every time they shrink the die they cut the ability to overclock due to the magnitude of heat generated.

A small voltage increase on smaller, more fragile and more numerous transistors causes temps to skyrocket much sooner than they used to. Die costs for gpu manufacturers goes up substantially to shrink to the next level which is why gpu dies have remained the same size for years. We're seeing optimizations but no major breakthroughs. The other limiting factor in overclocking are the base frequencies being so high.

In order to get twice the 'speed' or perceptive speed, the part must achieve 200% increase. Eg, moving from 1ghz to 2ghz (within the same architecture of course) netted a 50% real world speed increase. People wouldn't see 'double' the performance until they moved from 1ghz to 4ghz. Now that we're starting around 4ghz, 8ghz would realize only a 50% performance increase and 16ghz would be needed to get that 100% faster jump. Which at this stage of the game is becoming pointless due to human limitations. The human user is now the bottleneck.

 

[rubix_1011]

I agree, and until we get to actual quantum computing capabilities, we are likely not going to see a revelation of substantial performance increases without a dramatic redesign of how synchronous and non-synchronous data processing currently exists. It is unfortunate that companies have been attempting to 'dumb down' overclocking for the uninitiated, but they've had to, in order to continue to drive sales. Use of GUI overclocking interfaces give the feeling that the average user is actually doing something substantial, but in reality, it is only driving them to continue avoid understanding what is taking place behind the scenes.

It's nice to be at a place in computing history where we've reached a powerful plateau of power and speed while attempting to lower power usage and improve operational efficiency. However, we're still operating like it's year 2000 and the AMD vs. Intel gigahertz race is still on...clock speeds don't mean what they once did. Computational threads per clock cycle are where power comes from now, not brute speed.

Yes, 'it will go faster' if you ramp clock speed...but for what purpose? A 3dMark score? A CPU-Z signature tag? Super. But what are you doing with that...?

 

[thekyle64]

Liquid nitrogen or hydrogen are the best way to cool any processor

 

[rubix_1011]

I guess it depends on what you consider 'the best' to be. If you mean in terms of lowest possible temperatures on hardware with constant need to babysit the setup, then yes.

If you mean something that you can use to run 24/7 at 100% load for weeks on end without any interaction, I'd say no.

 

[4Ryan6]

Overclocking is losing more and more viability as a true method to improve 'anything', really. A decade ago, it was a significant way to boost performance in a market that didn't offer hardware that could easily benefit most users.

Today, we have quad core CPUs that are multi-threaded and offer stock clocks in the mid-to-upper 3ghz range...well above what any user or power user needs for anything...including high-end gaming or computations. Graphics cards are released every 6 months that offer 10-15% performance improvements. Almost none of this is viable in any real-life situation and for anything that is production sensitive that benefits from these improvements should never be used with overclocking due to it's unstable nature over the course of time and hardware degradation. Much of overclocking anymore is about what score you can post in a signature line from a synthetic benchmark or a CPU-z snippet. There is rarely much of a real-world benefit with the power of hardware that currently exists and most end-user software that currently exists. Are there example cases for both? Yes, of course...but most of the overclocking argument still comes back to a number that you can say you reached. Like buying a Ferrari to commute to work...sure it will do 200mph, but where will you see this benefit?

That being said, overclocking is great, but there are so many people trying to do it simply for the signature line badge and less for the actual accomplishment and benefit of why they are attempting. You don't need a 4.7ghz quad core to post Facebook messages.

If you really feel that way rubix, why do you hang out in the overclocking section?

You bash overclocking like it's a has been dead thing to do, and end your statement with "overclocking is great"?

You don't really overclock any of your machines anyway do you?

You don't need a 4.7ghz quad core to post Facebook messages.

Of course you don't, and if that is all you do with your computer, all you need is a tablet!

but most of the overclocking argument still comes back to a number that you can say you reached.

My overclock is 24/7 used every single day, and I see the performance output and it's not just some number or benchmark, even audio and video encoding, and raw CPU processing is accelerated by overclocking.

This statement of yours reminds me of the Fox that couldn't reach the grapes, you know the story right?

Since the Fox couldn't reach the grapes, he told all the passers by that the grapes were bad, so they wouldn't try to get them!

You and I have two completely different views regarding overclocking and it could simply be you've never reached a level to really see the performance gain from overclocking.

What holds all overclockers back is #1 lack of overclocking knowledge, everything keys off of that, and #2 is cooling, keeping it cool enough to reach a high goal.

Overclocking is losing more and more viability as a true method to improve 'anything', really. A decade ago, it was a significant way to boost performance in a market that didn't offer hardware that could easily benefit most users.

We have much better hardware to overclock today than a decade ago, did you actually read what you wrote?

A 1ghz over stock overclock today is almost a daily common thing with hardware today, I'm at 1.5ghz over my stock clock, some reach much further than that today.

I guess we'll just have to disagree, but since you felt the need to post what you did, this is My 2 Cents on the subject!

 

[rubix_1011]

Yes, we'll just stand to disagree on some of these items as it's simpler that way. We'll leave it at that.

 

[rpjkw11]

I ran my i7 4790k with a Phanteks TC14PE and a Noctua NH-D14. At stock or moderate overclocking, temps were always acceptable. I use low profile RAM, so clearance has never been a problem. Either of those coolers will serve quite nicely.

I cool exclusively with air thus I never worry about leaks.