Hey Sup Forums, got a question for you. I'm looking into getting some new cooling setups going for my desktop...

Hey Sup Forums, got a question for you. I'm looking into getting some new cooling setups going for my desktop. I haven't had any 'true' overheating issues, but when I'm playing games for extended periods of time my temps get into the high 70s, and my fans are loud as all holy shit. There's a few points on my case to put in additional fans (I can dredge up the exact case if you need me to), but I was wondering whether that's the better option, or if I need to look into some kind of liquid cooling?

Other urls found in this thread:

amazon.com/AMD-FD8320FRHKBOX-FX-8320-8-Core-Processor/dp/B009O7YU56?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Air cooling can still be really good provided you do it correctly. If your case allows it, make sure you have an exhaust fan on the top. Hot air rises and whatnot.

You don't need a top exhaust fan. As long as you have one in the rear, that should be enough.

I remember reading somewhere that convection becomes irrelevant as soon as there is some fan-induced airflow in the system. Not sure if that's true or not.

Clean your heatsink and CPU heatspreader, reapply thermal paste, get some high static pressure fans for the cooler (Noctua NF-F fans are great) and you should be good. Also connect them to 4-pin headers for lower idle noise.

It currently has a front intake and a rear exhaust, but I'm pretty sure the anchor points for the 'extra' fans are on top. The fans that are in there already are the ones that were built into the case when I bought it.

Yech. I'm pretty leery about reapplying the thermal paste, to be honest. I'm worried I'll fuck it up.

Also to make sure I don't fuck everything up, is there a 'safe' way to clean the heatsink? Mostly I've just been opening the case about once every week, ten days or so to give everything a thorough dusting with canned air.

Double also, right now my rig is on the floor next to my desk (but about 6 inches away from it to allow actual airflow); should I clear space to put it physically ON the desk?

>should I clear space to put it physically ON the desk?
If you're thinking of doing this because of dust accumulation, I've found through personal experience that it makes absolutely no difference. As for temperature, having it on your floor is slightly better, but only by 1-3c.

Anyway, you should have 2 front intake fans (preferably 140mm or just one 200mm fan) and a rear exhaust fan. Adding more fans than this is not going to give you a significant decrease in temperature. Also, cable management doesn't matter as much as you might think it does.
>my temps get into the high 70s
Invest in a good CPU air cooler. This alone will make a significant difference. What case do you have?

Corsair Carbide Series Black 300R Mid-Tower. The CPU cooler is just the one that came already attached to it out of the box, and it's done okay so far, but I really think dust is the big problem.

From what I understand you have a front 140mm (with a dust filter) and a rear 120mm fan already installed. Add another 140mm fan to the front and that should help a little (4-5c). Clean your dust filters every month or so and you should be good to go.
>The CPU cooler is just the one that came already attached to it out of the box
So you have a pre-built? I assume the CPU cooler is pretty much garbage. Get a nice dual tower heatsink and if you have the money replace all of your stock fans with some quality Noctua or BeQuiet! fans, but only if you don't care about spending $70-100 on fucking fans. That's about all you can do.

>So you have a pre-built?
No, I built the rig myself. The CPU already had a fan and a sink when I bought it, all I did was mount the sumbitch to the motherboard. Lemme dig around and find the exact model I bought.

Also, I'm not 100% sure how to actually remove the dust filter on the front fan. There's a slide-out filter just under the power sink, on the very bottom of the rig, but all I can really seem to "do' for the front fans is just blast the shit out of them with canned air.

>The CPU already had a fan and a sink when I bought it
Alright, I understand. It's a stock heatsink and stock heatsinks are usually trash. I highly recommend installing an aftermarket cooler. Tell me your budget and I'll find you the best one for the money.
As for the front fan filter, it's not removable, but you can take off the front panel to clean it more easily.

Also forgot to mention it's better to vacuum the front filter (remove the front panel first) instead of blowing air through it. By blowing air through it, you're blowing the dust into your case or your room.

I'll have to look and see where the front panel comes off, I don't want to break anything.

As for budget, what 'tiers' am I looking at here? If the stock is absolute trash, what price range is "slightly better", what's "okay", what's "Really good", and what's "insane"?

I'm not having crashes from overheating, I just feel like my temps are a little on the high side and want to get on top of it before it GETS to that point.

Y'know I never thought to try vacuuming it because I was worried the static or something would fuck everything up.

>I'll have to look and see where the front panel comes off, I don't want to break anything.
There should be a groove at the bottom of the case where the front panel is. Just place your hand in it and use a bit of force to take it off. You might have to quickly tug and it should come off. Don't worry, it won't break.
> If the stock is absolute trash, what price range is "slightly better", what's "okay", what's "Really good", and what's "insane"?
Stock heatsinks are loud as fuck and don't cool well enough even if you aren't overclocking. They're pretty much useless if you care about silence.
Slightly better tier would be $15-20, okay is $20-50, really good is $50-70 and 'insane' (what I consider optimal) is $70+.
>I was worried the static or something would fuck everything up.
It won't as long as you take the front panel off and don't allow your fans to spin. You don't even have to take the front panel off, just make sure the fans don't spin as they might get damaged.

Alright. I'll power it down tonight to make sure the fans are down and don't kick on, and then I'll vacuum the fans.

I think around the 50 dollar range should be fine- it's not overclocked as far as I know (unless it was overclocked out of the box) and I only really need to drop the noise and temperatures a little bit, rather than by a huge degree. I can't recall the card ever going above 80, and usually it's between 70 and 73ish when it's working HARD.

>I'll power it down tonight to make sure the fans are down and don't kick on
That goes without saying, never clean your shit when the system is on. What I meant is be careful the fans don't spin because of the vacuum or air can or whatever you use. The motors and bearings inside of them could get damaged from spinning while they're off. Just put a finger on one of the fan blades to make sure it doesn't spin up.
>I think around the 50 dollar range should be fine
$30-40 range:
>CRYORIG H7
>Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
>Enermax ETS-T40 (color doesn't matter)
Cryorig H7 is probably the best choice among the 3, but they're all really good for the price.
To tell you the truth, I don't know much about heatsinks in the $50 range, so you're going to have to some digging on your own. As for the $70-90 price range, Noctua NH-D15 and NH-D15 are a great choice (they're pretty big, make sure there's room in your case and that RAM clearance is not an issue).

>Noctua NH-D15 and NH-D15
Meant to say NH-D14 and NH-D15.

Alright, I'll look into it.

Just... bleh, I have to apply thermal paste for this. I'm worried I'll fuck it up. The shit I have, it came already fully assembled and everything, so there was nothing for me to wreck.

Okay, found it

amazon.com/AMD-FD8320FRHKBOX-FX-8320-8-Core-Processor/dp/B009O7YU56?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage

That is the literal exact processor I bought. I took it out of the box and mounted it onto the motherboard, and that's all. However that exact product comes is how it is in my tower right this moment.

>I'm worried I'll fuck it up
Put a small dot on the CPU die (size of a rice grain or slightly bigger) and place the heatsink down (wiggle it around a little before tightening it to 'spread' the paste, but it's not necessary). Once you place the heatsink on the CPU, make sure not to lift it back up. If you do, clean and reapply the thermal paste and do it again. This is to avoid air bubbles. There's plenty of videos on youtube, it's not difficult and there's not much that can go wrong.

Yeah, the heatsink that CPU comes with is absolute trash. I can only imagine how loud that thing is.

...that's it?

Last I looked into it there was this whole big deal about having to evenly spread it with like, a credit card or something like that to make sure it was evenly applied on every portion of the heat sink and there were no bubbles.

Pretty damn. Even with MDR-V6 headphones on, unless there's actually ACTION going on in a game I can hear the whirring.

FUCKING

200 CFM DELTAS

PLUG YOUR EARS PUSSY

>a credit card
Terrible idea unless you like air bubbles and thermal paste all around your CPU socket. Never use a credit card to spread thermal paste.
Pic related is the area that needs to be covered. It's where the actual CPU cores are. All you need to do is just tighten the heatsink over a small dot or vertical line of thermal paste. It'll spread just fine.
>Pretty damn. Even with MDR-V6 headphones on, unless there's actually ACTION going on in a game I can hear the whirring.
Yup. I remember my old stock Intel heatsink from 5 years ago. It was unbearably loud and inefficient.
Also, with most aftermarket coolers, you can control the fan in the BIOS (for example only 50% at load), but that shouldn't be necessary as pretty much all aftermarket coolers are MUCH quieter than stock coolers. As I said, Cryorig H7 which is around $35-40 is a good choice, but if you have the money and RAM clearance isn't an issue, I highly recommend springing up for the 'insane' tier Noctua NH-D14 ($75) or the newer NH-D15 ($80-85).

Forgot pic.

I might just hold off another paycheck and grab the Noctura. It's way more power than I currently need, but I've had this exact CPU for about two and a half years now, so I'm almost certain to buy a new one this December during black friday as an upgrade.

How much clearance do I need for those coolers? I'll measure tonight.

>How much clearance do I need for those coolers? I'll measure tonight.
The NH-D14 supports RAM up to 44mm tall. The NH-D15 supports 64mm. Most RAM modules should fit just fine as long as they don't have crazy tall heatsinks.
The Cryorig H7 supports all RAM modules.

>RAM modules
>Crazy tall heatsinks
Uh... my ram doesn't have heatsinks. It's just RAM.

In that case you're good to go.

More case fans won't really help your Temps. Get a better heats ink for cpu, dont get liquid cooling.

Also heat rises so slow it won't matter here.

Okay, I thought either I was being messed with or I was missing something massive. I've just got a pair of 4GB sticks (which I'm gonna upgrade soon- I haven't decided if I should swap them straight for 2 8GB sticks, or just get two more 4GB sticks)