at list this isn't correct: "for double the price" there are many aio systems that cost same , or almost same, as a good air cooling. the question was about sonic differences. AIO that cost the same have inferior cooling compared to similarly priced air cooling. Vicotnik is 100% correct when he sai...

Nice post and component breakdown. As for the 1800X and random reboots, are you sure the CPU is the cause? Many people have random reboots with the 2700X and C7H but it is due to certain monitoring software or interactions between them. If it's hardware, I would not consider it acceptable and would...

Nice post and component breakdown. I'm not familiar with watercooling, but 10C above ambient at idle seems... unexpectedly high? I would think it should be very close to ambient. I added a 120mm fan on the front of the NH-D15 (140mm doesn't fit) and it drops temps a few degrees compared to just a s...

If you want an older cooler that is compatible with the AM4 socket, almost any of the Thermalright single-tower coolers will work Thanks, I looked for used (or new) Thermalright and Scythe, and found practically nothing or just the odd discontinued model usually for Intel sockets, often without fan...

@cdnlinuxdude The Phanteks PH-TC12DX seems decent, but don't forget with shipping it comes to $70. Also the fans at 600-1800 RPMs seem too high for silence. The nice part is the build and mounting system look similar to Noctua, and it won't block PCIe slots, although the fan might still block tall ...

@cdnlinuxdude If you find any interesting quiet air coolers available in Canada in addition to the ones already mentioned, please let me know. Good luck with your quiet build. And that 64GB of RAM... drooool. Thanks. I have seen the Phanteks PH-TC12DX selling for about $62 at Newegg. Which is about...

If you want an older cooler that is compatible with the AM4 socket, almost any of the Thermalright single-tower coolers will work Thanks, I looked for used (or new) Thermalright and Scythe, and found practically nothing or just the odd discontinued model usually for Intel sockets, often without fan...

Noctua said that if you bought the cooler from an autorized seller (newegg is i believe) that you just need to send the proof of purchase and ask for the AM4 mount and they will mail it to you for free I was looking at a buy/sell/trade site to see what's available, so that wouldn't qualify for Noct...

Here's a preview: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/radeon-hd-7850-scs3-passive-cooling-heat-sink,22584.html Looks like the cooler on the Powercolor 7850 is a lot smaller than the one on my 6850. Which means that you're going to need massive airflow through your chassis. Quite frankly, if silence is ...

Update. I changed the fan configuration on the HR-02 (original) from a single 12cm Nexus 500-2000RPM intake fan to a Gelid Wing14 intake @900RPM and a 12cm Scythe Slip Stream 0-1350RPM exhaust fan, and it's working beautifully. The i7 3770 maxes out at 65°C under full load (a really good number for ...

I just did a new build with an i7 3770, HR-02 "original" (non-Macho) and Lian-Li PC-B10 chassis. The i7 3770 runs a lot hotter than did the Xeon X3360 in the same chassis, despite having a much lower TDP (77W vs. 95W). Apparently that's normal, because while the 22nm Ivy Bridge processors generate l...

I own the passive 6850 and ended up attaching a 140mm 500RPM fan to it. It's fast, quiet and cool this way, so I can't complain too much. It would have been nice if PowerColor had added some fan mounting holes and a PWM connector but they didn't. You can run it passively only if you have one of thos...