[SOLVED] Need advice on air CPU cooler

[Avik Basu]

I need to buy a new cooler for my CPU and this is my first time so I have a couple of questions about it.

One of the coolers I'm looking at is the Hyper 212 Black Edition but there seem to be two of those with a huge price difference. The basic Black one costs double the price of the RGB black one whereas both of them have the same RPM but the RGB one comes with more fins. Doesn't that make the RGB one slightly better since I've heard more fins mean better cooling? Why does the basic one cost double? Is the RGB one inferior somehow?

Of course, that's the costlier option. The other cooler I'm looking at is the Antec A400 for a budget solution. But I can't find any reviews on it. So I want to ask how good of a performer is it? And how much of a performance difference is there between it and the Hyper 212 Black? I know that it has a slightly lower RPM than the Black. I'm sure, looking at the price of the Black, it is a better performer than the A400. But can the A400 be used as a good budget cooler to avoid the costlier road?

To give an understanding of my situation, my room gets very hot for most of the year but especially in summer. It can easily reach 34C. Around winter and spring, the CPU would idle at 43C-48C and get as hot as 68C-73C. Now it idles at 53C-58C and can get as hot as 75C-80C. Although I have two intake fans I doubt the air that they are blowing in is much cooler than what the two exhausts are blowing out.
I just started playing PUBG and I have to play at low settings with the FPS capped at 30 to keep the temperature at around 69C-72C. But there are spikes in when the matches are loading and the temperature touches 80C-84C. Then there are moments after a couple of hours when the temperature goes to 78C-79C for a few seconds while playing a match. And it's not just PUBG but GTA 5 took it over 80C on highest settings and AC Odyssey can take it to 75C-79C on medium settings. My usage is about 3 hours of gaming and an hour or two of basic work per session. I'm not an overclocker and I don't do anything other than gaming that would put stress on my PC.

Also, will either of these two cooler fit my case?

My specs are :-

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (with stock cooler)
Asus B450-E Gaming motherboard
G.Skill Trident Z 3200MHz 2x8GB RAM
Asus GTX760 DC2 2GB DDR5 GPU
Corsair TX650M 650W PSU
WD Black 1TB HDD
Cooler Master Masterfan MF120R A-RGB 3x1 case fans
Carbide 175R Case with 1x fan.

 

[Avik Basu]

I think I read in passing about someone buying an AIO and replacing the fans with higher RPM ones. Not knowing almost anything about liquid cooling I assumed that higher RPM is better for cooling. I plan to start off with one of the presets unless I see there's a need for a custom curve. I'm neither expecting nor reaching for ice-cold temps. I just want the CPU to be in a good stable temp without having to keep an eye on it every time I play a resource-hungry game.

 

[Karadjgne]

It's a common tactic, especially on older stock fan designs. However, it rarely works out right.

Rads are a specific depth. They have a specific amount of air resistance due to this and the fpi (fins per inch) which sets certain characteristics.

Fans are specific. A good rad fan has a certain balanced ratio of static pressure to cfm.

It's the combination of rad airflow characteristics vrs fan ratio which gives you an aios performance. By changing fans, it's pot-luck. Just adding higher rpm doesn't mean anything if it destroys the ratio. You want the air to go through the rad at the right amount. If it goes too fast, it doesn't absorb the radiated heat enough, so coolant temps rise, making it worse on the cpu. If the air goes through too slow from lack of pressure or too much turbulence, the air gets saturated and can't absorb more, so coolant temps go up...

The 2 best rad fans for years with aios were the Scythe Gentle Typhoon and Noctua NF-F12. Both had mediocre static pressure, both had mediocre fan speeds. Except both had an almost perfect ratio when combined with a aio rad. At 900rpm either got the same or better performance than many 2000rpm + fans. Massive difference in volume. Massive difference in stepping, those fans had a 400-500rpm range from normal to max over a 30° to 70° curve, the high speed Corsair's had the same curve but went from @ 1200 rpm to 2400 rpm.

Corsair being limited to what fans it branded. Competition from nzxt, Arctic, thermaltake, fractal design, Enermax, deepcool etc has forced Corsair to revamp its fans, the new ML series, in order to remain the top seller worldwide.

So most times changing fans based on 1 characteristic like rpm is a fools move, but people are slaves to their opinions, however uneducated they may be.

Using higher rpm fans is like wearing bigger shoes thinking it'll make you run better. Doesn't always work out. Matching the right type of shoe, in the right size for your foot will be of much more advantage.

 

[Phaaze88]

So most times changing fans based on 1 characteristic like rpm is a fools move, but people are slaves to their opinions, however uneducated they may be.

Ouch...

 

[Karadjgne]

Ouch...

I know, sounds rough lol, but it's true nonetheless. Ppl switch out perfectly good rad fans for expensive ARGB fans all the time or use the RGB case fans, then wonder why their temps on the cpu are junk, never having used the stock fans. They end up blaming the AIO as junk and not worth the price instead, when really they assumed a fan was a fan and had higher rpm, so should work better. Next thing you see is ppl in forums saying don't buy this aio, it'll give lousy temps because they had one.

That's like taking a high performance Ferrari and running it on regular 87 octane gas/10% ethanol and then complaining when it has no performance, gas milage sucks, and it's full of knocks and pings and never runs right.

 

[Avik Basu]

So I've got the cooler and I'm trying to install the fans but none of the long fan screws are going in completely. There's a few millimetres sticking out which is making the fans dangle. Is it supposed to dangle?

 

[coolraveen]

@Phaaze88

With cover, PUBG medium settings at 60FPS

Without front cover, PUBG medium settings at 60FPS

Without front and side cover, PUBG medium settings at 60FPS

It rained today so the room has been a bit cooler and the front fans have been getting cool air, unlike other days but it still reaches 80C and stays there for a few minutes.
I hope all the information you need is in the screenshots.

I live in chennai india, so i think we have the similar temperature, go for Antec A400, i use the same for my RYZEN 5 3600,

My room temperature 29 - 31 during summer and outside temperature reaches 37 - 41,

My idle temperature went from 55 - 60 to 41 - 44 deg, and gaming temperature reduced from 87 plus to 75 max.

 

[Avik Basu]

Ok, so I finally got the cooler installed. I have never experienced anything like it. It cannot be installed by one person. The screws were so tight. It wasn't only not spinning but actually got stuck at one point every time and my screwdriver kept slipping out. In the last 15 years, I have never needed any help installing a part until now. I actually had to get a professional to help me with it and even he had a tough time with it.

Moving on to the performance of the cooler, it's doing a good job, I think. In idle I'm getting around 41C with some spikes to 50C-55C. While watching a 1080p video on YouTube it goes to around 45C-50C with some spikes to 55C. While gaming I'm definitely getting better temps.

This the hottest it got in the map that made my CPU run the hottest before. The temp stayed there for a couple of minutes before dropping.

This is the coolest it got in the same match. This was fleeting. It stayed there for less than a second.

The game plays around at 61C-71C. Mostly stays close to 70C but often goes down to low to mid 60C. I have also noticed in the iCue software that everything is running over 2300 RPM, fans, and pump. Although I don't think I hear any sound of it all running so fast that bothers me. Even with the ceiling fan off, which is relatively quite noisy, the sounds from the PC doesn't bother me. Maybe I'm just not as sensitive to those sounds as people who use them in a quiet environment.

 

[Avik Basu]

Correction:
While watching videos the temp stays around 55C, sometimes going around 60C. And while playing PUBG this afternoon the temp mostly stayed around 71C-72C with occasionally dropping 62C-64C with some spikes that'd take it closer to 80C but I don't think it actually touched it. Maybe it's more to do with the time of the day and the ambience temp around that time. And the fan and sounds are pretty noisy. I just didn't hear it last time because my headphones were on. Still, nothing that gets in the way of game sounds if I'm using the headphones. When I said the sounds weren't as noisy I wasn't playing anything so I assume the fans weren't running as fast. Which is weird since iCue said everything is running over 2300 RPM. And while playing it's showing the same thing.

 

[Avik Basu]

Ok, so final words, everything seems to be working alright. On the hottest day since I installed the cooler, the temp got around 75C-78C. But on lesser hot days it's around 62C-72C. And on slightly cooler days it's around 58C-68C. This seems to be a pretty good result in my opinion.

Of course, part of it depends on the settings. It gets pretty hot in PUBG with medium settings and 60fps whereas AC Odyssey plays on medium to high, with a couple of ultra settings in 30fps at a comfortable temperature usually around 65C. While PUBG is known to have resource issues, I'm not sure how other AAA games, especially newer ones, will affect the temp if I try to play on high or even ultra settings after a GPU upgrade.

Anyways, thanks to everyone for their advice. And thanks a lot @Phaaze88 for walking me through this. I really appreciate it.

 

[Phaaze88]

PUBG, to this day, still is a poorly coded mess - I'm not calling it bad; everyone's mileage varies with what they like to play.
The programmers were/are lazy and have never bothered to update the game engine. It's for that same reason that 'beastly setups' aren't far ahead of more mid range ones here.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it, I guess...


You're welcome!