what to use as a cooler for my current rig. watercooled or air.

Just as the title says. I wish to upgrade my CPU cooler with a better one. I have 0 experience with watercooled and want an option between $100-300. There is spots on my thermaltake chaser case for a 24mm radiator and hose holes out the back. It is a fairly roomy case and I have posted pics on the how your rig thread and will repost if needed (just painful to do on my phone.) I want cool temps so I can of my I7 960, but I want performance and looks in this case. I have been thinking about the thermaltake frio oc king or the possibility of watercooled. I am basically looking for professional opinions on what to do to achieve my goals. My general case theme is blue like my peripherals.

Also. I do plan to overclock.
I do plan to dual/triple sli.
I will be gaming on max settings in a not very well ventilated room.

Hope that helps.

Darkelk,

As you aren't that familiar with water cooling I would dip my toes into a sealed system to start as I did.
The Corsair H100 is on sale now for just over a 100 dollars USD so you are in a great budget area but please factor in for better and more silent fans and if that case has fan controlling built in then use it for this corsair fans as they are load at full blow.









Let's correct that to just under 100 USD ! Yikes.....good for you bad for me ....lol
http://biz.tigerdirect.com/applicati...1556&CatId=499

Okay, I will look into that. If i have to be thrown in the deepend about watercooling and have a little bit of a push in the right direction (I like tinkering :) ) I would be quite pleased too. Anyone aware of any links or such? greatly appreciated, thanks.

Then you will want to start at video one and move all the way through to the last. Much research and education will be needed and you will want to address all the components you want to cool. Understand your case and what it can hold and where and this may actually be the best time to look into a new case to hold the additional hosing, reservoir and radiator(s).

Check out this article in CPU Magazine. They did some tests on Air and Water Coolers. Click on the November 2011 issue and I think the article starts on page 19. For some reason the print is blurry on my system but there is a download button on the left and I downloaded it in PDF format and it looks great.
Update: I found if I click on a page and it zooms the print is very clear. Its using Flash so just one of those things.

ComputerPowerUser.com Digital Edition

Jim