Question Seeking opinion on two different case sizes/ coolers

[Koghan]

Im looking to top mount an aio cooler that works well enough to keep an i5 12600k cpu as cool as possible. the two cases in question are the corsair 4000d high airflow and the corsair 5000d high airflow. I am wanting to know what cooler will fit into the case and also not overlap the ram slots/sticks. I'd prefer to get the smaller case if there's a compatible sized cooler. if not i am open to getting a bigger cooler for the bigger case. it is critical to me that the cooler is able to keep the temperature on the lower side of the acceptable range while under full usage. Thanks in advance for any input.

 

[Sarscarix041]

Since you said that you are inexperienced, I thought I would throw in my 2 cents worth.

{The amount of air being pushed into the case} and {the amount being pushed out} should be roughly equal. (Otherwise, something will be working hard to push extra air in or out through… any gaps it can find.) I believe that it is uncontroversial that the pressure in should be slightly higher than the pressure out. This is to prevent dust leaking in through said gaps. [This is about the cfm or m^2/hr given in the fan specifications.]

Personally, I am a fan of [sorry] having fans in the side wall next to the GPU, as [as people have said] the GPU produces lots of heat. I do not have a settled position on whether in or out is better… but right now I am thinking that pulling the air out would be better, as the alternative is to push it around inside the case. Conversely, pulling air results in it coming from every direction, but pushing air (I think) largely results in it going straight forwards.
Conversely again, I guess that is the point of water-cooling a GPU; I think this is supposed to deal with all of the pertinent heat sources, and allow you to push that heat straight out of the case.

I suppose that the collective, summary point is that… if you (for instance) exhaust all of the CPU heat straight out the back using air, or straight out anywhere using water… and exhaust all of the GPU heat straight out somewhere using water… then you are going to want a heap of input fans that ostensibly do nothing (with heat). Note that you should cool your HDDs as well. [Noctua is a premium [fan-only, I think] brand, in both price and performance.]

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p.s. Also note that some fan sockets/plugs are 3-pin [“DC <something>”] and some are 4-pin [“PWM”]. [Briefly: 3-pin can control the speed by varying the pin2 voltage [search “BIOS”], and 4-pin (PWM) does control the speed by varying the pulse length on pin4 (and leaving pin2 as just power)… and the latter type of fan will also vary in speed in a 3-pin socket.] Look up your motherboard manual, both for which it is and also for whether the 4-pin sockets behave like 3-pin sockets (by consulting the Fan Header pin descriptions). See the following threads, and note the comments by “Paperdoc”. I take it that you can run up to 4 fans from 1 header, but you should check this. (CPU_OPT uses the CPU fan speed but does not report its speed back. Similarly, if you daisy-chain fans, only the 1st one reports its speed. Speed reporting is pin3.) (The power supply fan sockets just run the fan full-bore. …Or you can buy a fancy “fan controller”.)
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/is-there-a-way-to-control-3-pin-fans.2905718/
https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...nd-4-pin-fans-from-same-splitter-hub.3454275/

 

[Karadjgne]

^ much depends on the case, and the fans on question. The Silverstone Raven series is at the top of the list of best relative airflow, they use a chimney style with only fans at the bottom as intakes and use natural thermal properties combined with the fans pressure to basically help generated heat fly out the top of the case. Adding a side fan, either intake or exhaust would totally destroy that airflow pattern.

Just as having a side fan as intake will by most standards cool the gpu better by proximity, the rest of the case suffers, especially air cooled cpus. As exhaust can be just as bad, as airflow follows the path of least resistance, so a high low-pressure area by a gpu is closer to the intakes, so that side fan gets a gpu better temps, but in turn can starve the cpu, which is also getting radiated heat from the gpu.

The 2-3°C differences aren't much by themselves, but combined leaves case temps significantly higher than normal, which affects inside ambient temp start points, basically the cpu idle will run that much hotter.

Newtons Third Law. For every action is an equal and opposite reaction. So the trick is to get some semblance of balance. It's not necessary to get a cpu as cool as possible, as that generally means sacrificing temps on the gpu, and vice-versa. It's better to have cpu 60 and gpu 70 than cpu 55 and gpu 75 etc.