I need a cooler for my ASRock Z77E-ITX, which I'm going to put in a custom built case.

The AXP-140 was a solid choice for me until I bought it last week.. there's nothing wrong with it,
but I figured out a different way to build the case using an Antec cooler instead that would make more sense..

Neither of the coolers are top performers, I just want it to be reasonably quiet.

Do we have any 620 owners here who can help me out?

I have not seen many reviews of any integrated water cooling system that are quiet, or even outperform the best heatsinks.

My money would be on an air cooler rather than water.

Also cheaper and wont destroy your PC if there is a leak.


Andy

It really depends on your definition of "quiet". I find the pump on the Kuhler 620 relatively inoffensive, and can't hear it over my Nexus PWM fans once they spin up over 1k RPM during heavy load. Not that they're particularly quiet fans either, but they make a pleasant enough whoosh .

as far as I can tell there are 3 problems that lie with integrated water-cooling systems.

The pump is the main problem, some rattle and some dont, some will allow you to run them at a lower voltage and some dont, and if you get a bad pump you will be sending it back.

The other 2 problems are directly linked, the fins on the radiators are very close together and there are lots of them, which brings me straight to the final problem of fans and pressure. To get a decent cooling ability you need to have fans that can generate a good amount of pressure (i.e. high speed) or you need 2 or even 3 fans that run at a lower speed and combined will generate enough pressure, which also adds to the total cost and increase the total noise above a single fan.

If you compare all of these (potential) issues with a large heatsink with 1 or maybe 2 fans that dont need to generate high pressure and dont need to spin fast and will cost less, the question becomes more like "why would I want water cooling".? I have tried it years ago, it worked very well performance wise but it was never super quiet. I then bought a mk1 Ninja and got rid of the water cooling, the Ninja was much quieter and only 2C warmer under max load - I have never looked back.


Andy

Thank you for the feedback.

Things are a bit complicated since the choice of cooling affects what other parts I can use, just because I want a ridiculously small case.

The fact that cheap water cooling pumps may generate more noise after several months is a deal breaker for me though. I've looked around in forums and it's not that unusual.

Water cooling is high maintenance and complicated compared to air, for no gain other than being able to position the radiator away from the CPU socket, compared to good air coolers. I've heard Antec and Corsair pumps (admittedly I cannot recall which ones they were) in demo rigs and it was not pleasant; I would describe it as adding another HDD that never shuts up.

I would stay with the air cooler.