a long while back I made this video
looking into whether or not premium PC cooling fans were worth it this raised
another question however one that some people are actually rather uncomfortable
discussing is aftermarket CPU cooling
even worth it I understand why this can be a difficult conversation people often
don't like P their purchasing decisions coming to question but in 2015 with much
of the hardware development world going to less power draw and lower thermal
output is is it needed anymore let's
find out and stay tuned for a course for gaming update coming soon where we'll
explore how many CPU cores are really needed for gaming in
2015 The Cooler Master Nova touch tkl utilizes exclusive hybrid capacitive
switches powered by toer and is now available at a more affordable price
click now to learn more many a time in the history of PC
Builders a young Jimmy or Jane has sat at the checkout window wondering if they
should spring for a better CPU Cooler at the cost of a weaker component elsewhere
hours have been spent researching this question but to no avail whatever shall
they do if they're not interested in overclocking or Aesthetics the obvious
answer is just to stick with the stock cooler and invest elsewhere but if they
want to overclock is it worth it how
much is worth it there are a lot of potential Avenues to look look at this
from one we won't be exploring is custom water cooling Loops they are too
expensive although there's some exceptions they're perform better
although there's some exceptions you get the point essentially custom water
cooling is an extreme variable because it's well custom there's a metric ton of
benefits to custom water cooling but many of them come at the cost of well
cost at paxis 2015 I did a top five
gaming desktops of the Intel Booth uh video one of the systems shown in that
video the main gear one had around $1,000 in just fittings alone now I know
not everyone's doing that and if you are you know what that's freaking awesome
and if you're interested in that that's great please post your build in the
build log section of the Forum because it's probably going to be beautiful and
I'm probably going to want to see it but this video may not really cater to you I
personally water cool custom water cooling but I spent about a quarter of
that on my whole setup including all the fittings and everything and I expect most people that are newly
getting into water cooling will be getting topthe line processors anyway so
the whole is it worth it question is less likely applicable to them because
improved water cooling is directly on their CPU performance upgrade path now
if someone is getting a processor that does have potential upgrades now we're
talking what we will be testing is a Cooler Master T4 in order to represent a
fairly average example of a low to mid-range air cooler at about $ 30ish
and a Cooler Master seiden which will represent the Dual 120 mm rad and the
similarly performing large dual air Tower coolers like the Noctua nhd15 at
around $100 is do last and definitely least in terms of performance is the
general run-of-the-mill No Frills Intel stock cooler which is bundled with your
processor the antagonist in the story will be the Intel
4690k an extremely commonly recommended and purchased processor that will be
testing these coolers at 3 different settings one is the stock setting of a
3.5 GHz base frequency and a 3.9 GHz
boost frequency and next is a slight gahz overclock of all cores running at 4
GHz but a pretty hefty voltage increase running at 1.25 volts and lastly it will
run into another slightly higher frequency of 4.3 gz and a heavier
voltage increase of 1.35 volts please note that you could run these voltages
and get much higher clock speeds I was simply cranking up the voltage to turn
up the heat next up up we have the cmt4
and before you comment down below that I'm a horrible human being because I
didn't use the hyper 212 Evo I know I'm
sorry we somehow don't have one in office I honestly have no idea how Linus
has gone this long without having one in stock yeah anyways it's slightly more
expensive and will perform slightly better than the T4 and as you can see
the general message would have probably been somewhat similar overall the 1.35
volt overclock resulting in a 95 Dee processor and some throttling wasn't
great but this small upgrade allowed us to run at 1.25 volts at essentially the
same temperatures as the stock cooler at stock speeds and voltages on the CPU a
solid Improvement for just 28 bucks lastly we have the siden 240 this cooler
was able to achieve a very nice stock speed load temperature of 47° and tied
the stock Cooler's stock clock thermal output but at 1.35 volts giving you a
lot more room to play with but the siden 240 has a really awkward price position
when compared to a 4690k because a 4690k
is $240 and a 4790k which is hyperthreaded and has a much higher
boost clock of 4.4 GHz is $340 exactly $100 more very similar
pricing to a siden 240 in conclusion is
it worth it I'll give you a solid maybe
from the raw performance numbers it looks like if you don't want to
overclock don't upgrade if you want to overclock but don't have a ton of budget
get something like a hyper 212 Evo if you have a fair amount of budget upgrade
your processor or if you're already at the top of the line just get whatever
your budget allows but that's not the whole story either is it some people
care a lot about Aesthetics I could call them shallow but I do as well maybe I'm
shallow I don't know and then there is some silus junkies as well I know people
that run custom water cooling setups for just their entire systems and don't even
have an overclock they just do it so they can turn their fans and their pumps
super low and run their computer at a whisper quiet level what solution is
best for you for me it's custom water cooling I've had a bunch of my kit for a
while so upgrading doesn't really cost that much money I really like the
Aesthetics and it's just fun are you someone who's going to try to save a
bunch of money and not buy an aftermarket cooler are you going to go for like the affordable but kind of
badass get a little bit more out of your processor range or are you pretty much
already up there and just want something cool and easy let me know in the
comments down below or even if you're custom water cooling which is super badass comments down below over on the
forum either one totally works let me know also down below this video you'll
be able to see a link for shirts that are definitely not a Twitch Plays
Pokemon shirt although Twitch Plays Pokemon was awesome Nostalgia anyways over on the
Forum as well there should be a support us link where you can change things like
your Amazon affiliate links to our affiliate codes so we get a small
Kickback whenever you buy things over there which is actually super helpful
and there's tons of other ways to support Media Group as well like going
on the Forum or watching videos anyways thanks for watching I'll see you guys
next time