Just bought a huge CPU fan ... just for NS2
Kamamura
Join Date: 2013-03-06 Member: 183736Members, Reinforced - Gold
Join Date: 2013-03-06 Member: 183736Members, Reinforced - Gold
NS2 forced me to overclock the CPU, thing I didn't think I will do, since other games are mostly GPU dependent. I managed to overclock i3570K to 4.2GHz with just the stock cooler, but I noticed the CPU runs about 75 °C hot, which is not quite healthy longterm. So I bought this monster - Noctua NH-C12P SE14:
and voila, the temperature when idle decreased from 50-55 °C to ~37 °C, and when playing NS2, I now have only about 55°C, which I consider quite amazing. Take care, however, if you have memories with tall heatsinks, they may not fit under the cooler (there is a space for them, but not every type fits). I had the old Corsair XMS chips with huge silver heatsink, they had to go too.
Well, the added costs of gaming ;-) But I recommend the cooler, it's very silent and the mounting system is very well done, the installation itself is rather easy once you figure it out. Be advised that you would have to remove the mainboard, though, since the cooler includes a backplate.
and voila, the temperature when idle decreased from 50-55 °C to ~37 °C, and when playing NS2, I now have only about 55°C, which I consider quite amazing. Take care, however, if you have memories with tall heatsinks, they may not fit under the cooler (there is a space for them, but not every type fits). I had the old Corsair XMS chips with huge silver heatsink, they had to go too.
Well, the added costs of gaming ;-) But I recommend the cooler, it's very silent and the mounting system is very well done, the installation itself is rather easy once you figure it out. Be advised that you would have to remove the mainboard, though, since the cooler includes a backplate.
Comments
I personally went with a Noctua heatsink, can't remember which model off hand, but it was rated somewhere in the top10 for heatsinks in terms of performance.
I can overclock my phenom 2 x4 (with old stepping so it builds up more heat than other ones) over 4ghz, which is pretty good for that model cpu.
When I built my computer I purposely bought ram without large heatsinks on them because I knew large heatsinks would get in the way.
edit: I see you got a noctua as well. Although the one I got is one of the tower ones.
You also didn't mention which cooler you purchased
Ad pasta remark - you can't be serious.
Ad frames - I have 90 - 110 in the beginning of a round, and it goes down to 50 - 70, or so in the thick of late game battles.
I have 8GB of RAM clocked at 8-8-8-22@1600MHz, GTX 670 with 4GB RAM, I run the game at 1920x1080 with all details maxed except Ambient Occlusion which I have set on Medium.
On a side note, Noctua have the most quiet fans on the market. Hands down.
Yeah, it's pretty big, it fills all the remaining space between the memory sticks, PSU and GFX card. I measured my case and found out the tower would not probably fit, did not want to risk it. However, I am quite happy now, the only thing remaining is to sell the old memory sticks online, and I am done.
yep, a lot of people don't seem to understand that the top rated heatsinks can do just as well if not outperform many watercooling setups.
I'm getting 80+fps and more importantly, 80 responsive frames per second these days... I have a 2500 (non k).
I'm surprised by that as well. I do however see Water coolers are less "bulky" - space wise.
2. If you plan on doing any video capture/streaming
As a personal preference, I like to have NS2 stay above 50fps at all times, which typically only occurs for high overclocks.
Honestly dont see much difference between a 20 dollar evo and a 75 dollar noctua, you might get a 5 degree advantage from that noctua if you're lucky.
Water cooling has additional non zero costs in the form of powering the pump, pump noise and risk of water leakage. If you are custom loop you then have additional costs of maintaining the loop which is a pain in the ass compared to air cooling.
I did the custom loop thing, and I think it made sense for my hardware at the time. The air cooling on the HD4870 1GB sucked and screamed like a banshee at load. Putting the water loop on that cooled it down fairly quietly. Eventually the pump died and I upgraded to a new rig with a Noctua NH-D14 and an Asus Gtx 660 Ti that clocks in at 24 dB at load, stock.
So... these days I see very little reason to go watercooling unless you are absolutely determined to squeeze out every last Mhz.
I could overclock my 3570k, but I don't because I'm quite happy with the noise/performance ratio right now.
PS: If you still want a custom loop I have a thermaltake radiator, swiftech cpu block and dual gpu blocks I want to sell.
Just make sure if you get it that your ram doesn't have large heatsinks and that you have enough pci-e slots as mine covered the top one enough to render it unusable.