Question CPU and CPU cores temps

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Aug 6, 2021
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Hi i have i7 10700k not overclocked wiht a budget air cooler from antec a400 rgb
With HWM in idle 38 to 45 degrees cel , in load like playing warzone the cpu reaches 72 max in HWM and also using rivatunerstatistics
but the cores all 8 of them always above 72 sometimes 89 88 ?
is it overheating ? should i upgrade for a water cooler or it s because i have only one exhaust fan should i add more on top of the case ?
somthing to notice it s summer now and like 48 degree sometimes in my room , idnt use ic cause i can't stand it
 
Aug 6, 2021
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Yes, the Noctua NH-U12A, while only a 120mm cooler, is very good.

Below is my list of preferred CPU AIR coolers, also known as Heatsink fans (HSF).

Do not look here for recommendations on water/liquid cooling solutions. There are none to be found.

BEFORE seriously considering ANY cooler, make sure to compare it's height with the maximum CPU cooler height supported by your case. If a cooler won't fit, then there isn't much point in looking at it anyhow unless you are willing to replace the case with a larger, more accomodating model. It should probably go without saying that the recommendations below are NOT intended for systems that incorporate small form factor or mini ITX type enclosures. These are generally for standard ATX tower cases. For recommendations on coolers for very small enclosures, there are many of us around here that can offer some suggestions based on the use case.

A good air cooler works just as well for most applications. There are very few instances I can think of where an AIO will work better than a good air cooler, and even fewer where an AIO will outperform an air cooler if you are willing to buy the right air cooler and then level up by adding some even higher end fans to it.

Loops leak. Heatsinks don't. Pumps fail, FAR more often and usually with far worse consequences, than fans do.

And unlike a heatsink fan assembly, when your pump fails for 99% of AIO coolers, you will be replacing the whole thing, for another 100+ dollars, rather than just a 25 dollar investment for the failure of a fan. Especially since I've rarely seen dual fan coolers have both fans fail at the same time, but even if you factor in two fan failures that's still only about fifty bucks compared to the 100+ it will cost to replace an AIO with a failed pump. And you WILL have a failed pump on most AIO coolers within three years of purchase. Seeing one last longer than five years is possible, but it is not particularly common and we often, very often, see them fail at around the 3 year mark. Sometimes much sooner.

Pump quality and longevity is an area that needs GREAT improvement before AIO coolers will become a primary recommendation for me.

I see a lot of AIO coolers leak and damage hardware as well.

Certainly there are situations where an AIO is called for, or even preferred, but those are MOSTLY aesthetic considerations, because let's face it, a build with an AIO or custom loop generally "looks" a lot cleaner than one that has a big heatsink taking up half the real estate inside your case. When that is the case, I have recommendations for those as well, but I don't offer them unless somebody is specifically asking to go that route.

They are basically listed in order of preference, from top to bottom. To some degree that preference is based on known performance on similarly overclocked configurations, but not entirely. There are likely a couple of units that are placed closer to the top not because they offer purely better performance than another cooler which is below it, but potentially due to a variety of reasons.

One model might be placed higher than another with the same or similar performance, but has quieter or higher quality fans. It may have the same performance but a better warranty. Long term quality may be higher. It may be less expensive in some cases. Maybe it performs slightly worse, but has quieter fans and a better "fan pitch". Some fans with equal decibel levels do not "sound" like they are the same as the specific pitch heard from one fan might be less annoying than another.

In any case, these are not "tiered" and are not a 100% be all, end all ranking. They are simply MY preference when looking at coolers for a build or when making recommendations. Often, which HSF gets chosen depends on what is on this list and fits the budget or is priced right at the time due to a sale or rebate. Hopefully it will help you and you can rest assured that every cooler listed here is a model that to some degree or other is generally a quality unit which is a lot more likely to be worth the money spent on it than on many other models out there that might look to be a similarly worthwhile investment.

Certainly there are a great many other very good coolers out there, but these are models which are usually available to most anybody building a system or looking for a cooler, regardless of what part of the world they might live in. As always, professional reviews are usually an absolutely essential part of the process of finding a cooler so if you are looking at a model not listed here, I would highly recommend looking at at least two or three professional reviews first.

If you cannot find two reviews of any given cooler, it is likely either too new to have been reviewed yet or it sucked, and nobody wanted to buy one in order to review it plus the manufacturer refused to send samples out to the sites that perform reviews because they knew it would likely get bad publicity.

IMO, nobody out there is making better fans, overall, than Noctua, followed pretty closely by Thermalright. So if you intend to match case fans to the same brand on your HSF, those are pretty hard to beat. Of course, Corsair has it's Maglev fans, and those are pretty damn good too, but they tend to be more expensive than what are in my opinion better fans by these other two, so while they are good products they don't have the same noise characteristics and are probably better suited for configurations where sheer brute force is preferred over low noise that still gives good performance. Also, as with most fan models out there, don't look at the specifications for the non-RGB Maglev fan models and think that you'll be getting the same specs on any RGB versions, because you won't. Fans with RGB tend to sacrifice both maximum CFM and static pressure for the right to stuff the RGB electronics under the hood.

Noctua NH-D14 (Replace stock fans with NF-A14 industrialPPC 2000rpm)
Noctua NH-D15/D15 SE-AM4
Noctua NH-D14 (With original fans)
Thermalright Silver arrow IB-E Extreme
Cryorig R1 Ultimate or Universal
Be Quiet Dark rock Pro 4
Noctua NH-D15s
Thermalright Legrand Macho RT
Phanteks PH-TC14PE (BK,BL, OR or RD)
Deepcool Assassin III
Noctua NH-U12A
Thermalright Macho X2
Thermalright Macho rev. C
Thermalright Macho rev.B
Thermalright ARO-M14G (Ryzen only)
SilentiumPC Fortis 3 HE1425
Thermalright Macho direct
Deepcool Assassin II
Noctua NH-U14S
Thermalright true spirit 140 Direct
Cryorig H5
FSP Windale 6
Scythe Ninja 5
Scythe Mugen max
Scythe Mugen 5 rev.B
BeQuiet dark rock (3 or 4)
Thermalright Macho SBM
Noctua NH-U12S
Arctic freezer 34 eSports Duo
Phanteks PH-TC14S
Phanteks PH-TC12DX (Any)
Cryorig H7
Deepcool Gammaxx 400 and 400 v2 (v2 is a better option with some improvements)



It may not be obvious, but is probably worth mentioning, that not all cooler models will fit all CPU sockets as aftermarket coolers generally require an adapter intended for use with that socket. Some coolers that fit an AMD platform might not fit a later AMD platform, or an Intel platform. Often these coolers come with adapters for multiple types of platforms but be sure to verify that a specific cooler WILL work with your platform before purchasing one and finding out later that it will not.

the noctua nh u12a it is
another thinh tomorow m going to buy some fans i decided to buy three 140mm fans from arctic for intake f14 pwm pst they are good for airflow and 2 high end fans for exhaust the choice availble for me is the coolermaster sf120m they are little bit cheaper than noctua they come aroune 27 dollar each with very very impressive reviews and performance and features they are industrial graded so what u thint about this and also my msi z490 mpg gaming plus have alot of fan headers 6 fans and 1 cpu 1 pump to avoid wire cluster how many fans can i hook to onne fan header ??
and finally will this noctua fit the case ? any risks of it not fitting ?? m gonna ask someone next week coming from europe to buy it for
 
The U12A is 158mm tall with the fan. Since your case supports coolers up to 165mm, then yes, it should fit.

In my opinion, I'd look at something other than the Cooler master fans. I don't like them much as a company and other than a few of their cases, I don't really much care for most of their products either. When it comes to fans I always try to stick with Noctua, but there are a good many fans out there sold by Thermalright, Corsair, Be Quiet, Scythe, Cougar, Fractal design and a few others that are pretty good. In fact, if you're going to put Arctic 140mm fans in the front, and since they are generally not very expensive, I'd think about simply putting 120mm Arctic fans in the exhaust locations as well. Obviously they are easily available to you and they do have some with fairly decent specs. You can likely get them to all match pretty closely that way as well.
 
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The U12A is 158mm tall with the fan. Since your case supports coolers up to 165mm, then yes, it should fit.

In my opinion, I'd look at something other than the Cooler master fans. I don't like them much as a company and other than a few of their cases, I don't really much care for most of their products either. When it comes to fans I always try to stick with Noctua, but there are a good many fans out there sold by Thermalright, Corsair, Be Quiet, Scythe, Cougar, Fractal design and a few others that are pretty good. In fact, if you're going to put Arctic 140mm fans in the front, and since they are generally not very expensive, I'd think about simply putting 120mm Arctic fans in the exhaust locations as well. Obviously they are easily available to you and they do have some with fairly decent specs. You can likely get them to all match pretty closely that way as well.
okay than thats good and for the number of fans i can hook up to a single header ??
 
Using a fan splitter I would recommend not connecting more than two fans to any one fan header. Technically, they can generally handle the amp load of three fans, but I recommend not putting more than two on any one header to avoid potential catastrophic failure if there is an issue with a fan pulling more amps than it was supposed to.
 
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Using a fan splitter I would recommend not connecting more than two fans to any one fan header. Technically, they can generally handle the amp load of three fans, but I recommend not putting more than two on any one header to avoid potential catastrophic failure if there is an issue with a fan pulling more amps than it was supposed to.
I installed 3 140mm fans in fromt of the case arctic p14 and another 140mm above the cpu on top and one 120mm inbthe rear of the case also i use new thermal paste i put generous amount of mx-2 from arctic.
For the temps after 2hours of gaming or playing warzone the maximum temp recorded was 76 degree Celsius with the AC in the room off and the room temp is above 37 i think like 40 49 degrees Celsius so the average while gaming with AC off is 62
To conclude the temps are much better i was seeing peaks of 88 in the max temps recorded and kn the cpu doesn't reach 80 Celsius at all only with better case fans.
When pc Doing nothing idle or just youtube max temps recorded is 55 degrees Celsius and minimum recorded 37degrees Celsius and average 44 again with AC off.
When i was whipping the old thermal paste some of it dropped on the mb m pretty sure i cleaned it but m afraid if i left a spot bcz some thermal pastes conduct electricity and could cuz a short so i was hoping if you kn smthing about this thermal paste that was an add-on with the cooler it s name is antec golden grease.
 
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I can't tell you anything about the Antec AG-1 golden thermal paste because it is apparently an Asian market only product and the only few pages with listings for it are all in a different language. I think if you were going to have a problem you probably already would have and as long as you cleaned it off good with isopropyl alcohol you should be fine.

Glad to hear the temps improved and of course they should certainly improve even further if and when you get a better CPU cooler, if you decide to do so.
 
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I can't tell you anything about the Antec AG-1 golden thermal paste because it is apparently an Asian market only product and the only few pages with listings for it are all in a different language. I think if you were going to have a problem you probably already would have and as long as you cleaned it off good with isopropyl alcohol you should be fine.

Glad to hear the temps improved and of course they should certainly improve even further if and when you get a better CPU cooler, if you decide to do so.


Yeh yeh m going to get the fuma 2 it way better than the noctua nh u12a and also performance almost like it.
Two other things i put a generous amount of mx-2 maybe some it went to the edges of the cpu or cpu socket does it conduct electricity or m good?
And for the fuma 2 in their website it will fit my case also there unlimited ram clearance but m good in this section cuz m using short rams the vulcan z i was wondering if the fuma will interfere with IO cover? Like msi mpg z490 have a cover that covers the IO m afraid it will interfere with it?
And m guessing that with this cooler temps won't exceed 65 underload for sure
 
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