So, I did say that with proper fans, and I would define NFF12s from Noctua to be
about as proper fans as you can get for heat sink and radiator applications,
these are directed flow fans that are optimized for static pressure, optimized
for silence. You can see they have rubber isolating mounts. I mean, honestly, just the build quality of
these quality of these is just outstanding. I've unboxed this fan
before, so you probably already know what I think about it if you saw that. But if you haven't seen that, it's
freaking awesome. Basically, it's like the best
fan. Um, where was I going with this? Ah,
yes. So, without the adapter, it runs at 1500 RPM. Personally, I'm going to turn
these bad boys down. So, I'm going to use the low-noise adapter because I'm a
bit of a silence freak. This is going to be my standardized test bench. But
before I get started with my with my heat sink and radiator test bench, I
wanted to do a quick test cuz I had some people asking me, uh, well, you say
there's not much difference between just pull and push pull. As long as you're
using good quality fans, uh, what do you mean? Are you sure? Are you sure,
Lionus? Are you sure? So, that's what I'm going to be doing. I'm going to be taking these fans with their low-noise
adapters. I'm going to be running them in just pull on an
H100i and then I'm going to be running them in pushpull on an H100i to see with
a pressure optimized fan just how much of a difference there is. So I will be
back. All right guys, this video is going to serve a couple of purposes. So
number one, it will answer once and for all that question that people keep
sending me. What should I get to cool my CPU? And I'm talking like extreme like
not you know the Hyper22 users out there. I mean, that's a good heat sink
and all that, but we're talking performance options here. So, we have
the H100i from Corsair right there,
representing the dual radiator pre-done liquid cooling class of products. We
have the Silver Arrow Extreme representing extremely high-end air
cooling. See, dual towers, like eight
heat pipes, whatever else is going on in there. Don't worry, I'm not using these
fans. And we have the H80i representing
thick single radiators. Oh, I should guess I should go find a thin single
red. Hold on just a sec. Actually, forget it. I said this was for
performance options. So, we're doing performance options here. Now, I want to
talk a little bit about my standardized test bench here. This is a Corsair C70
Vengeance case. I'm going to be running it with the stock fans in the front. I
am going to be running it with this fan in the back regardless of whatever else
is going on. That is a Noctua NFF12. My favorite fan. And whatever cooler I put
in it is getting more Noctua NF12s.
These are going to be run with their no their low-noise adapters cuz I
personally don't think even for the highest performance gaming rig these
days that there's any excuse for it to be loud. So that's a 3930K in there.
That's going to be overclocked and overvolted. That's a GTX 580. We're
going to close up the side panel because that's enough of CPU coolers being
tested on open test benches. I know it's not realistic, so I'm not going to be
lazy about it anymore, guys. We're testing all CPU coolers in a closed case
without perfect cable management, just like they're going to be run in the real
world. So, we're going to take idle and load temperatures of each of these
setups. We're only using Noctua NF12 fans. We're replacing whatever comes on
whatever coolers we use. In the event that a cooler must use a larger than 120
mm fan, we have A15s, so we can use
those instead. Those are 140 mil fans.
Um, so let's get started. Oh, right. One
more thing. The reason I'm using the same fans on every cooler because the
stock coolers that or the stock fans that are included with most coolers are
rubbish anyway. So you and again, we're talking performance options. You should
be buying your own fan that's better. Um, also I'm using aftermarket thermal
compound on all of them. I'm using IC Diamond thermal compound. So there you
go. I've had a lot of people talk about IC7 versus IC 24. Guys, it's the same
stuff. The 7 and 24 for carrots. Carrots are just weight. They're not purity.
Um, right. So, yeah, consistency. So
that way we are going to have a consistent sort of overall noise level
to the system because we're going to be running good quality fans and we're
going to get a consistent experience with fans that are correctly optimized
for whatever kind of cooler we're using because these are correctly optimized
for any heat sink or radiator cuz they're awesome. High pressure, focus
flow, just good, good, good, good fans. Step one, clean the existing thermal
goop and any residue off of both surfaces. So clean CPU is needed. Clean
bottom of the heat sink is
gain up. Also needed guys, when applying thermal
compound, less really is more. Remember, this is a 2011 chip, so that's how much
goop it takes for that. For an 1155, it will be much less. For this next shot,
prepare for your mind to be blown. I'm going to turn around my shotgun
mic. There we go. Get that pointed at the computer so you guys can hear what a
gaming machine sounds like when it's correctly optimized.
Oh. Oh, it's silent. L minus. Why do you
care so much about the silence of your gaming rig? Well, because it doesn't
have to be loud. Hold on. Turn my mic back around. It's
unnecessary. It's just ridiculous. If you want a loud gaming rig, then why
invest in these elegant cooling solutions that do such a good job? Why
not just use a stock cooler? And why don't you get an Xbox while you're at
it? You want a loud gaming machine? I've explained this before in a
previous video, but I just want to go through my methodology again really quick, guys. So, basically, I'm using
Realtemp GT to take temperatures. I am
recording idle temperatures after about 5 minutes just idling at the desktop.
Um, I am recording ambient temperatures
using my multilogger thermometer right here with a I forget something. Type K
type KT type sensor. There it is with a Ktype sensor um right at the intake for
the case. So remember guys, the front is the only intake that we're using here.
So the air is uh basically coming from there. So that gives us a pretty good
idea of what temperature the air cooling the CPU heat sink is. And then I am
taking load temperatures after about 5 minutes. For air coolers, I don't need
to wait quite as long, but for liquid coolers, you have to wait for the liquid
temperature itself to equalize. And then I'm recording everything here. So, I no
longer need these noise notes unless uh a water cooler has a pump noise because
remember guys, with water coolers, you have whatever fans are running on it
plus a pump. Every mechanical thing you add to a cooler is a another point of
failure and b another potential noise source. And I want to explain again how
I'm correcting for idle temperature for ambient temperatures. So, I'm going to
correct to 20°. I I had people debating
me about this last time. Please go find a physics professor or something and ask
them if this is how it works. If the temperature were to go up to 20°, it
would scale by 11.8°. That that's just that's how it
works. It's not it's not something that I want to debate about. So, I'll be
correcting all temperatures and reporting them as if the room was at
20°, not as if it's at 9.2 degrees cuz
I'm in Canada in my garage. And another thing for low temperature testing, I
will be running the GPU at full load as well as the CPU at full load just to
simulate again a closedcase environment where the system is being taxed and a
worst case scenario for an actual real
system that's actually been built. So let's go ahead and take our load
temperature. So I'm taking the second hottest core, which looks like it's at
about 61°. Again, guys, this isn't like the super scientificest way to do this.
So 61 and a 10 degree ambient. There we go. All right. It looks like the
temperatures haven't gone up since I did my H100i load test. So here's H80i. And
I've been saying for a long time, and I was never quite sure how right I was
that single rad, like a single 120 mm rad solutions are not even close to a
dual 120 mm rad. So you can look at
there's our there's our idle temperature. It's around 29 on the
second hottest core, which gives us a difference between an H100i and H80i of
like 15 almost 15° under uh at idle. So, let's see how
that gets changed under load. All right. So, here's the H80 with
one fan, but I'm going to give the H80 the benefit of two fans since it comes
with two fans. So, we'll test it that way as well. But it looks like our load
temperature is
85° and our intake is
10.1. Well, I was a little surprised at how much of a difference it made to
switch to a push Whoops. 10 Oops. 10.8.
There we go. To switch to pushpull on the H80i. I guess it shouldn't surprise
me that much because it is a thicker radiator. I know on the H100 it doesn't
make that much of a difference, but there you go. Our corrected temperatures
at idle show about a 3°ree improvement over just a single pole fan. And then at
load, it's about a 10°ree difference. However, it's still nowhere near the
performance of the H100i. Or rather, sorry, hold on. Here's
our corrected one. So, yeah, about 10 degrees delta and then our difference
between them and uh still 13 degrees worse than an
H100i. Well, it's time to measure the contender. It should be noted, guys,
that there is more to CPU cooling solutions than just performance. I mean,
for example, these Corsair coolers do come with the link software, which
allows you to set up things like fan curve profiles and cool stuff like that.
Whereas, I mean, in my experiment, I'm limiting the factors as much as
possible. So, I'm keeping all the fans at a constant RPM, but that's something
you have to bear in mind. Also, installation for the water coolers is
much easier than these huge bulky air coolers, however blingastic they might
look with their multiple fans on them. You can see the configuration is still
standard. Also, with big air coolers, you can see there's very little clearance between that lowrofile dim and
the uh fan itself. So, you can't you're really limited in terms of what memory
you can install. Um, more wires. Actually, not necessarily more wires,
especially with that USB cable that runs to the HI series. So, let's find out how
this does. Let's boot her
up. All right, so idle temperatures are 26° for our Silver Arero Extreme and
ambience have gone up a little bit since we started here to
11.1°. Well, there you have it, guys. The H100i, even with all other factors
being the same, is the ruler of the roost. So, our ambient are still
11.1°. And with the Whoops, sorry. With
the Silver Arrow Extreme, we are at 67°.
Whoops. Sorry about that. We are at 67°
on the second hottest core. So, let's go ahead and fill out those temperatures.
1.1 67. So, you can see that it per
Whoops, Freudian slip there. So, it's
67° under load. So that corrects to
about 75 degrees under load. So there you go. So there's the
H100i. There's the H80i with dual fans.
There is the Silver Arrow Extreme with the same fan. So you can see the silver
a high-end air cooler. So remember guys, something like an NHD14 uh will be quite
similar to this in terms of performance. Destroys something like a thick single
radiator even in pushpull with highly optimized pressure optimized fans.
Whereas the H100i, especially under heavy loads, really pulls away from
those other solutions. See, at idle, these I mean, even these two look very
similar, but you can see how under load the uh Silverado Extreme really pulls
away. Now, that really demonstrates that as the as the heat goes up, so to speak,
the uh the men separate themselves from the boys in a test like this. I mean,
even this is only a 3° difference. That's why I don't like the way that Corsair does the packaging on these
products, at least the way they used to with the H100, where they would compare
it. Yeah. See, they still do this. It's just goofy. They compare it against an
Intel box cooler showing Well, okay, now
they don't even try to show a proper temperature, but they used to and uh it
didn't show that much of a difference because it's not until you overclock that it really makes a big difference.
So, thank you for checking out this video on Linus Tech Tips, demonstrating
that the H100i is the ruler of the roost. Don't forget to subscribe for
more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.