Greetings!

I've been gathering parts for a new system for several weeks now. The CPU arrives tomorrow, and now I just have to pick one last component - the CPU cooler - and I'll be ready to start building. This is the first system I've built from scratch in years, so selecting the parts has been quite an education. I could really use some advice on the CPU cooler selection to help make sure I don't compromise any of the other components I picked for performance or quietness.

Before I get to specific model recommendations, there's one basic question I'd like people to weigh in on: top-down versus tower.

From SPCR, we have this take from the "Recommended Heatsink" article: "Tall tower (or high rise) heatsinks with fans that blow air parallel to the motherboard rather than down at it are more likely to cause VRM component cooling problems"

My other major info source, Tom's Hardware, had this to say: "...the motherboard's power logic gets a bit of cooling assistance. But it's up for debate whether that makes up for limited performance and more noise."

Not sure where to go from here.

At the moment, I don't plan to overclock. But I'd like to have the option to do so in the future, and want a CPU cooler that could handle that if/when the time comes.

The case is an Antec P183 with acoustic padding and 4 Nexus Quiet B&W 120mm fans. I planned on only using two fans (front fan upper chamber and the rear exhaust) and just keeping the other two in reserve in case I decide to overclock at a later date. The motherboard is an ASUS P8Z77 Deluxe, the CPU is an Ivy Bridge 3770K.

I guess my main question is: with this motherboard and this case, should I be concerned enough about motherboard circuitry cooling to get a top-down cooler? Or is the airflow in a P183 with a front fan and a rear exhaust sufficient to cool the motherboard and allow for a tower cooler?

The second question is: will overclocking change the answer to the first question?

Many thanks in advance!

Ivy bridge run hot when OC, so if you are going for a high OC, i would go with water. For a mid OC, like 4.0ghz i think the circuity will be fine as you wont be pushing it too much, so i would go with tower cooler like Thermalright HR-02 Macho, but do remember overvolting will generate more heat and you will need to cool down, so in essence you either take the higher temps or spin the fans higher, thus making more noise, so its tradeoffs that only you can decided and test.

If I ever do overclock, it wouldn't be that high, so I think I'm ok with an air solution. And as I do more research, it seems that a tower IS the way to go.

I was also looking at the Prolimatech Megahalems - I know it's a 50% price jump from the Macho, but it's still within my budget, and seems to get high honors from SPCR.

Does the Macho allow for attaching a second fan? Also, can you attach a 120mm fan to something like the Macho that's sized for a 140? As I mentioned, my case came with four Nexus 120mm fans. Two I'll be using for the case, the other two are in reserve, and I thought I could use one or two of them for CPU cooling.

Also, looking at Prolimatech's site, I might have trouble putting in four sticks of high-profile RAM. I currently have two (Crucial Ballistix Elite), but was hoping to leave a door open for installing tow more of the same sticks in the future.

In general with tower coolers like the Macho or the Megahalems, do you pretty much expect to lose the fourth RAM slot, or even the third and fourth?

Again, many thanks!

You won't lose any RAM slots if your sticks don't have huge flashy heat sinks on them. Go with RAM that uses standard-profile heat spreaders at most. If you're running standard memory speeds (1333 or 1600), the chips should be cool enough to not need any help.

Hm, well . . . [sheepish] let's suppose - just SUPPOSE, mind you - that I already purchased two RAM sticks: Crucial Ballistix Elite 8GB 1866. They're certainly not as flashy as some of the high-end G.Skill chips, but they ARE taller than standard profile.

If I lose the ability to put a similar size chip into the closest slot to the CPU socket, then so be it (luckily I bought two 8GB chips, so the chances of really needing to upgrade to 32GB will be pretty slim).

BUT - can anyone confirm that the Megahalems or the Macho will allow a high profile RAM chip to at least sit in the second-closest slot to the CPU socket?

Take a look at the Prolimatech Armageddon.

If all the IB rumors are true there is a case to be made to use SB CPUs if you are overclocking. The main improvement in IB has to do with the graphics. If you are overclocking, you are probably using a video card as well. Why use IB then?

Your best bet is the Macho, as its asymmetrical, it starts flush with the cpu and grows to its back, while the megahalems is more centered on the cpu, so it should give you more room for memory the macho, then again it does come with a huge fan TY140 and very good i might add, but also asymmetrical i think one side is 152mm the other 140mm, you can place how you like, the brackets will work either way, but you do have to check your case for clearance to see if you can either way, in you case ideally you should use the 140mm side toward the memory/top so the biggest goes to the sides. one important factor is how close is the memory to the cpu, some have it further than others... so this is what really is going to limit you, my suggestion is to go with low volt memory like G.SKILL Sniper Low Voltage Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBSR2. this have semi tall heatsinks a little over standard memory but very little or just go with CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Low Profile Desktop Memory Model CML8GX3M2A1600C9 (check compatibility with your mobo).

The Armageddon looks like a possibility, and the Macho's off-center design could help as well - thanks. I was hoping to reuse the extra 120mm fans that came with the case. The reviews seem to say the Armageddon's clips don't support 120mm fans, but Prolima's website says it DOES. Have they come out with modified clips since the review was written, clips that support the more common 120mm fans?

Unfortunately, Abula, the memory has already been purchased: Crucial Ballistix 16GB. What might help me out is that it's a two-chip set, not a four-chip, so if I lose that first RAM slot it's not a huge deal. I just wish there was a way to make sure I wouldn't lose that SECOND slot as well, as that would require replacing either the RAM or the cooler.

I think the issue of Ivy Bridge overclocking and the heat it generates has been misunderstood. At an Ivy Bridge launch event that I attended there was an Intel sponsored professional overclocker who led a session on Ivy Bridge overclocking. This included reaching 5Ghz on air. (The cooler involved was the Be Quiet Black Rock Pro, which has two fans and is similar to the Noctua NH-D14). This issue of Ivy Bridge temperatures was raised with him. What he said was that Ivy Bridge processors are more powerful, clock for clock, than Sandy Bridge. With the i7 3770K this improved performance was estimated by him to be worth around 400-500Mhz. What was meant by this was that if you took say the Sandy Bridge 2700K and the Ivy Bridge 3700K, both are 3.5Ghz processors. Overclock the 3700K to 4Ghz and this is the equivalent of overclocking the 2700K to 4.4/4.5GHz, the 3700K at 4.5Ghz equals the 2700K at 4.9/5Ghz and so on.

So if our friend the pro overclocker is to be believed, in terms of performance Ivy Bridge processors are better for overclocking than Sandy Bridge CPUs. The downside is that with the higher performance levels come higher heat levels. I would say that if you plan to overclock Ivy Bridge to around 4.5Ghz then a tower cooler with twin PWM fans ought to be the minimum. It would also be desirable that at least part of the case airflow was thermally managed, such as having a PWM exhaust fan chained to the cooler PWM fans using a splitter cable. With some Z77 motherboards there will be sufficient PWM headers to avoid the need for PWM chains. Overclocking Ivy Bridge over 4.5Ghz is probably going to need a air cooler in the Dark Rock Pro/NH-D14 class or water cooling.

There was demo machines available for use at this launch event, so I did manage to get some hands on with an overclocked Ivy Bridge system. On a open test bed an MSI Z77-GD65 motherboard with a retail 3770K at 5Ghz was stable under maximum stress, with the two 120mm Dark Rock Pro fans running at 1550 rpm. This maximum stress was being generated by wPrime which was loading all four cores and the four virtual cores to 100%. The BIOS was reporting a CPU temp of 75C. Looking under Windows I couldn't find any software that was reporting core temperatures.

No, you don't need to be concerned about cooling the motherboard, particularly if you're not overclocking. However, I think you would get better results either putting the front fan on the bottom, to help create bottom to top airflow across the board. At worst, you might need to add another Nexus as an exhaust. Also, at stock voltage and speed, Ivy should run cooler than Sandy.

Even if you're overclocking, you would worry more about the CPU temperature than the motherboard's VRMs (of which the Deluxe board has lots, which should spread out the load, and keep them cooler).

Traditionally, tower coolers are much better at cooling the CPU than top-down coolers. However, the recent reviews for the Prolimatech and Noctua top-down coolers showed them to be excellent, so you could pick those if you feel concerned, as both seem within your price range.

He may have gotten lucky with his sample (it is an Intel launch event, after all), and I feel his estimates are too generous. The benchmarks I've seen shows Ivy to be ~5% faster, which results in a 4.5GHz 3770K being comparable to a 4.7GHz 2600K.

You can overclock Ivy using less voltage, but it gets much hotter with more voltage than Sandy does which will probably limit you from reaching Sandy speeds on air, but you should end up with roughly equivalent final performance. Unless you're running water or LN2, in which case you could surpass Sandy speeds/performance.

Considering this is Silentpcreview I suggest to buy a tower cooler and overclock "just enough". Nobody should worry about the last 1% performance if that makes the CPU 10C hotter. Ivy should overclock easily to 4,0GHz with a good tower cooler like Macho HR-02. Just keep the voltage as low as possible.

No need to spend money to water cooling. And in any case Ivy consumes less power at same performance level as Sandy so PSU will remain cooler and quieter. Just forget the last 1% and you'll do just fine

Thanks very much to everyone for their advice and input.

Paapaa, I'm definitely in your camp - overclocking "just enough" is more my style. My system has lots of headroom, but by not utilizing all of it, I'm hoping to keep things running exceptionally cool, quiet and stable.

I did what I should have done right from the start - broke out my motherboard and a ruler and just did my best to take measurements. There are actually a lot of coolers out there that would only block one RAM slot, but I'd really like to keep the option open of using all four slots. That means whatever cooler I choose has to extend a maximum of 29mm from the center of the CPU socket. The Macho and the Armageddon both fit that. I was able to confirm from Prolimatech (who were extremely polite and helpful, by the way) that the Armageddon box does not include 120mm clips, but that you CAN order their new "Armaclips" separately and thus get support for 120mm fans. That will allow me to use the leftover Nexus fans I have, so that's my final choise.

I should have some pics up in the gallery section starting next week!

4GHz is a mild over-clock that you will hit at stock voltage unless you are extremely unlucky.


The irony is that if you have a discrete GPU, which is usually utilised for gaming, over-clocking an Intel CPU will rarely give you a meaningful gain whilst gaming. They are separate issues although gamers often over-clock anyway. In other words there are plenty of good reasons to over-clock a CPU which are usually not related to gaming.


Overclockers are often more concerned with clock speed than actual performance which makes IB very uninteresting to them even if it is able to match or beat it in performance terms.


Exactly, don’t chase the last 5% or so; 1% is off the mark. At stock voltage it seems to over-clock very well according to the review below. Intel CPUs will usually give you a 20% or more over-clock at stock voltage so 4GHz is very conservative.
I think IB has a very decent power efficiency gain for silent computing lovers that like to keep the voltage at or near stock. So many people make blanket observations without considering that other people have different priorities.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5763/unde ... ivy-bridge