[SOLVED] Water cooler for i7 8700 recommendations?

[jaz2018]

I'm looking to try boosting my i7 8700 and wondered what QUIET water coolers
would be recommended? (Socket is LGA 1151)
Its mounted on an Asustek z370A-prime mobo in a tower case.

At stock speed the cpu runs at 30-34 degrees on a win7-64 desktop and
rises to mid 70 on intensive farcry-2 games (I dont play many games!)

Quiet is important - reliable and simple to fit/maintain also.
I have no interest in flashing lights.

Does anyone have suggestions (I'm UK based if that matters)
Thanks

 

[mark1776]

Noise comes from the fans, usually, as a quality pump will not make much noise. The larger the radiator, the slower you can run your fans. A 240 mm AIO will likely do adequate cooling, but it will ramp up the fans at higher power levels. So, depending on your budget and actual noise tolerance, you should look at a 360 or 280 if you have the room. Then pair the radiator with some decent high static pressure or all-around fans. Noctua NF-F12 or NF-A12x25 would work on the 120 mm format radiators. Given that you are looking for quiet, the F12 may be slightly better at low rpm for your application.

Then make sure you control software has the proper curves for what you want. You may choose to trade off higher temperatures for lower noise.

 

[jaz2018]

Thanks mark -
The NF-F12 you suggested looks like a nice spec fan.
Ideally I'd like a kit in a box to keep things simple as I've not
done this before and don't need top end overclocking - I think
my mobo pushes it up to 4.6Ghz on its default overclock setting.
(Presumably I can swap to the Noctua later if a full kit gets noisy?)

Is there a specific make or model of kit you would recommend for my
mobo/cpu?

A 240 should do it I think - I havn't looked at fitting a rad yet so dont know what size I could get to fit. My next job later today.

thanks

 

[faalin]

What cooler are you using now?

last weekend i used the Rocketcool kit to delid my 8700k. Its now running at 5.0Ghz @ 1.38v and maxes out at 56*c on OCCT test. I use a Cryorig R1 ultimate and swapped out the front fan for a slim to clear the ram.

 

[jaz2018]

hi faalin

At the moment I'm just using the stock intel air cooler.

I must admit I've never heard of delidding before but found some tools
on amazon and understand what it does now.

I'm hoping someone with an actual similar system to mine can suggest
a good water cooling kit. I dont want to end up buying something that doesnt fit
or is unreliable or noisy.

thanks

 

[mark1776]

I've used the Corsair 100i for my 9700k and it seems quite adequate. It should fit a top or front in many cases, and the water block is low profile and does not interfere at all with the RAM. Fairly quiet on Mersenne prime search load. The only custom kit I've used is the EKWB 240 slim, but I then swapped out the radiator for the XE (fat) version. EKWB seems rather pricey, but also has been high quality so far. Those fans are not particularly quiet, though.

 

[jaz2018]

I've used the Corsair 100i for my 9700k and it seems quite adequate. It should fit a top or front in many cases, and the water block is low profile and does not interfere at all with the RAM. Fairly quiet on Mersenne prime search load. The only custom kit I've used is the EKWB 240 slim, but I then swapped out the radiator for the XE (fat) version. EKWB seems rather pricey, but also has been high quality so far. Those fans are not particularly quiet, though.

Hi mark - thanks

I've just looked at the corsair and as luck would have it Amazon
have the corsair H115i pro model on sale for 98GBP and reading
the reports it has fans at 20dBA which seems pretty good so I've ordered one.
I'll post back when it arrives and I've fitted it.
I'm not looking to go crazy with overclocking but if it lets me do the
4.6 turbo I'll be more than pleased.

thanks again.

 

[jaz2018]

OK - so I fitted the H115i this morning.
It took a few hours as I worked out which way round I wanted the fans
(for cable routing not air flow - I did notice the flow arrow and other stuff)
I had to trim a few through-hole pins on the back of the mobo
that were sticking out a bit too much.
The base plate had me a bit worried when it didnt fit flush to the board
but things seem to tighten up when the pump was fitted.
(I remembered to remove the old heatsink compound from the cpu)

The radiator holes lined up in the slots of my case nicely and it fitted
quite well - (I was a bit worried about all that but I just pushed one cable
down a touch and all was well) I have a phenom case and the top just pops off nice and easy for fitting the radiator screws.

fitting the cables and everything else was easy enough.

I plugged in and it all fired up first time without any drama.
To test I set the mobo to turbo and it set the speed to 4.7 Ghz
On converting a HD video file in ffmpeg from wvc1 to mp4 this
pushed the tempreature to 100-C !!! No good !! I entered panic mode and
studied the bios a bit closer.

I found an auto-tune option in the bios and let that run. It set the speed to 4.4Ghz on the reboot and I ran the same test on the same files.

This is giving me peaks of just 84degrees C on all 6 cores - and I can live with that.

At 3.2Ghz this test ran the video conversion at 22fps (Hard drive not ssd read/writing because I already knew those figures)
At the new 4.4Ghz I'm getting a full 32fps = thats an amazing boost I didnt expect. I think maybe the second tune adjusted the ram too which must have helped. (I dont know why there's multiple ways to auto overclock in that BIOS) (Out of interest at 4.7Ghz I got 34fps)

So all things being equal I'm very pleased with the corsair cooler.
I then installed the software and turned off all the lights on my ram
and the cooler (I'm not 5 years old - flashing lights don't impress me anymore)

This all took about 4 hours including the testing - I think I could install one of these in about 20 minutes flat now I know how it all hangs together.

So many thanks to mark and all who replied to the thread - all your comments were helpful in steering me to look at things to get a good outcome.

jaz