Need help finding a (liquid CPU cooler)

[Dogeisilluminati]

I don't know anything good out there, but some caught my eye. Other than that I need some recommendations on a good, capable, affordable CPU cooler. My processor socket is 1150, and I will be doing minor to major overclocking. Please let me know some of the good ones out there.

 

[geofelt]

My canned rant on liquid cooling:
------------------------start of rant-------------------
You buy a liquid cooler to be able to extract an extra multiplier or two out of your OC.
How much do you really need?
I do not much like all in one liquid coolers when a good air cooler like a Noctua NH-D15 or phanteks can do the job just as well.
A liquid cooler will be expensive, noisy, less reliable, and will not cool any better
in a well ventilated case.
Liquid cooling is really air cooling, it just puts the heat exchange in a different place.
The orientation of the radiator will cause a problem.
If you orient it to take in cool air from the outside, you will cool the cpu better, but the hot air then circulates inside the case heating up the graphics card and motherboard.
If you orient it to exhaust(which I think is better) , then your cpu cooling will be less effective because it uses pre heated case air.
And... I have read too many tales of woe when a liquid cooler leaks.
google "H100 leak"
-----------------------end of rant--------------------------

I suggest a noctua nh-D15 or phanteks with dual 140mm fans.
Your pc will be quieter, more reliable, and will be cooled equally well

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.

 

[USAFRet]

^^^ What he said.

 

[getochkn]

I jumped on the AIO cooler bandwagon, and kind of regret it. Seemed cool at the time. Granted, I can OC my CPU fairly good with it, but I noticed I can't keep my VRM's cool enough now to get that high of an OC, mostly because I think removing a giant chunk of copper and a fan or two that would sit near the VRM's and cool them, is gone with an AIO setup. All the heat around the socket like VRM's and SB and NB that would receive some heat removal for being close to the copper heatsink and from the fans on it, stay there. My cpu stays cool, but everything is hotter.

Now my GPU fan's died and couldn't find a replacement so went with a G10 bracket and another AIO water cooler (black friday sale, cost me next to nothing) and that, well, kicks ass. I can play BF4 on near ultra, 100% usage, OC'd, and never hit about 55c.

Wish I would spent the $100 on the AIO on a better GPU though and got a Evo 212 or something, but what's done is done. I've have to mount a few extra fans around my case to help cool the other components that the lack of a heatsink/fan would give.