I've been thinking about the most appropriate way of upgrading my PCs cooling ability for the coming summer. Our autumn has been unusually warm (5 degrees above average) and it looks like our winter is heading in the same direction (which is fine by me). However summer here can hit 45 or more and my study is on the western side of the house which means it gets full sun in the afternoon (hottest part of the day). I am after opinions on what is more likely to work well. Upgraded air or water cooling. My case is an Aerocool Strike-X Air so there is really no space limitations. I've done alot of reading but honestly there seem to be alot of fanboys for both sides (water cooling appears to be something gamers and overclockers like when they aren't using CO2 )

If you have any thoughts please explain and share both good and bad.

Air, and you dont even need to spend as much as a Noctua NH-D15 to get really good results.

I'm current using a Xigmatek Gaia and Scythe Slipstream 120mm fan, the whole setup cost less than $40 and its very, very quiet, and keeps everything very cool. A 'better' model heatsink would do slightly better, but that is getting into diminishing returns. The system I'm running is cool enough that once I got a good idea of the temps in summer, when I did my last reinstall a few weeks ago (to move to a SSD) I didnt even bother installing any temp guages.

BTW, my main computer is in my bedroom and its on the western side of the house as well, with no real cover, and I'm running a 95/125 watt CPU (Phenom II X2 550 sometimes unlocked to X4 9XX).

I spent a lot of time using water cooling....for a while it was really worth it if you wanted cool and/or quiet. These days with good cheap heatpipe CPU coolers that take 120mm or bigger fans, and much better power management, water cooling is just not worth the effort , extra expense, weight and slight increase in risk in almost all cases IMO.

As far as the 'off the shelf' water cooling kits go, they are almost always with a few % of good aircooling, and quite often they are _worse_ than good aircooling. If you really want maximum (sane) cooling effect water still good, but you'll need to make a custom system to get the best results, and it would not a huge difference to good aircooling anyway.

I've got to say..CO2 cooling? Dry ice 'total loss' systems sucketh most profound. I spose they are less noisy than phasechange though....and I spose there is some crazy out there usign CO2 in a closed loop with the a fridge, sort of like a hybird loop/phase change system. Maybe. If so, it just goes to show how crazy some of the overclockers/'I iz the super engineer!' types are.....

^^^^^^^^
And that is exactly the type of information that is very hard to get. Thanks.
Reading various forums there appears to be alot of marketing hype about water cooling. Many of the Youtube channels are pushing water cooling and case makers advertise how many radiators, and how big, that can be squeezed into their cases.

CO2 cooling is interesting in that it says to me that some people have money to burn.

@Dugan, I'm interested to know why do you think standard Intel cooling.

This. I use a Scythe Mugen II with the standard Scythe fan that came with it, despite summer temperatures of about 30°C in the room never had any problems, even with overclocked CPUs. The cooler was about 35€, so nothing expensive.

Agree. I have one system with the ultra-mega liquid-coolers (and EVERYTHING is liquid cooled), but it was $$$, and the performance gains over a decent air-cooling system aren't that much. Still...looks pretty cool....

That said, you can go a totally different route, if looks aren't your thing: grab a mini fridge/freezer for about $50 new, and shove your uncased system in it. Easily drill a hole for USB ports, and open the door for physical access. Crank that sucker down as low as it'll go, and the cheapest air-cooler will work a treat.

And you can keep beer in it too. Just sayin'.

I think it's likely to be adequate. If your sensors show that the temperatures are indeed going too high, then yes, upgrade the cooling then. But not before the numbers show the need.

More info is needed. What is the idle and maximum temperature of the CPU in summer ?

As an example on my i5 system, standard fan, 2 x 140mm case fans, 1 x 120 mm case fan running at less than 50% speed idle, my CPU and GPU temp is 34-35 C. Under maximum load the temperature goes up to 70-75 C, which is below the high 80C and critical 100 C. Ambient temperature maximum is 30 C. I have Air Conditioning, so the ambient temperature will never go above this.

If you don't have A/C, then you could either get A/C or upgrade your PC cooling system. I imagine that at 45 C (113 F) the CPU may overheat, but personally, at this temperature I would not be worrying about the CPU, but rather about myself.

TobiSGD- nice, I was looking at one of them and some similar heatsinks, but the budget couldnt quite stretch. Well, I probably coulm have, but I wanted to get a new heatsink for both my systems (my 'main' system and the mediaboxxen), and in the end decided that while they were better than what I ended up with, they werent enough better to justify the extra expense.

I ended up using the money saved on sound cards for both systems LOL.

Even the much maligned AMD stock cooling is adequate. I was running the stock cooling on my phenom II for a couple of years, and never had problems due to overheating.

But even the cheap setup I'm now running is cooler than the stock setup by as much as 10-15C, and much, much, much quieter.

I'd guess its a question of how cool do you want it, how quiet do you want it, and how much is too much.

$100+ worth of cooling on a $80 CPU is bloody stupid, $40 on a $200 CPU is probably pretty reasonable, running stock cooling on a i7 LGA 1155/1150 is almost silly in a lot of cases.

Dont, just dont.

It can be done, IF you have a totally sealed fridge, and the wattage/efficiency on the fridge is higher than the system. I.e. if you have a system that pulls 100 watts from the wall, and the fidge is at least 50% efficient and is capable of running at 200 watts constantly, temps should remain stable.

But totally sealing the fidge is very difficult if you want to have cables coming out at all, and there isnt much point in running it if there are no i/o cables...100 watts 'from the wall' isnt that high really in the grand scheme of computer systems, and most domestic fridges cant deal with 100 watts of heat/200 watts constant draw, even 'full sized' fridges.

It will not work for any length of time with even a full size fidge, a $50 bar fridge will not keep up, and if it does its going to kill the compressor very quickly if its run at or near 100% for any length of time.....

Even if it does work, and it wont less you spend a lot of money for a _very_ hardcore industrial fridge, you will not be able to keep your beer in it. Not if you want to be able to access the beer and use the computer. Opening the door _will_ lead to condensation problems.

Seriously, if it was that easy, people would not bother with phase change cooling ever, and every overclocker around wouldnt bother with water cooling, they would just do this. Its not a new idea, its also not a viable idea, even given a large budget. If it was a good idea, things like the vapochil cases would have made a 'case as a fridge' rather than just phasechange cooling the CPU. To give you an idea of how decent a compressor you need for even that to work, vapochills used to go for $1K US.

You arent the 1st person to think this up, you wont be the last, but its a bad idea overall, and a very bad idea once you look into it. Many have tried, few have gotten a system to run for any length of time, and pretty much everyone who has tried has blown/broken/borked some parts or a whole system.

If you want to play with the idea for fun or to impress your friends, go ahead, but for a system thats meant to run, forgetaboutit.

Would it be feasible to get the temperature of the room down to a more reasonable level? Maybe add an awning and ceiling fan?

Umm..its difffiult to be more exact, and things vary depending on exactly what i5 you have...but generally the stock intel cooling is OK at low loads, or high loads for short periods provided that the TDP isnt high.

Yes, this isnt a even an example of the i5, but the stock intel heatsink design hasnt changed thaty much, results would be similar for the i5s (depeding on model and TDP)-

http://www.frostytech.com/articlevie...id=2132&page=4

Intel Stock Core 2 Duo

@ 85 watts TDP, 29 C delta.
@ 150 watts TDP, 49.2 C delta. 36.7 dBa

Zalman CNPS9700 LED

@ 85 watts TDP, 10.4 C delta
@ 150 watts TDP, 19.0 C delta 56.5 dBa

http://www.frostytech.com/articlevie...id=2132&page=4

Compare that to a more modern and cheap heatsink like the Xigmatek Gaia

@ 85 watts TDP, 10.2 C delta
@ 150 watts TDP, 16.7 C delta 44.1 dBa (high)

@ 85 watts TDP, 13.5 C delta
@ 150 watts TDP, 22.5 C delta 34.9dBa (low)

http://www.frostytech.com/articlevie...id=2595&page=5

So even a cheapassed modern heatsink can run less than half the delta of the stock intel heatsink while also being quieter.

The setup I'm running is difficult to guage, but IMO its probably quieter than the 'low' speed fan settings and gets performance more like the 'high' fan speed settings, because I went crazy and spent another $9 on a much better fan (the cheap fan is actually the weak point on the Xigmatek Gaia).

Since I know a little about your history of heating, both CPU and undercollar LOL, I'd guess you've stuck with the stock intel fan because, well, you can.

*edit- or I might be confusing you with someon else, sorry about that, 2AM post...

Suffice it to say, if you're worried about temp watching, buy a heatsink, the stock stuff is adequate, but but you really dont want to watch the temps...and the temps reported are not always accurate, but lets not do that dance again.

A cheap, wel choosen setup would probably be well worth it in your case metaschima. I know it used to be for me before I learnt to stop worrying about the flipping temps past a certain point....BTW, my buying the Gaia was more about noise than temps

I havent hit 45C here, but 42C, yes, more than once, and a few times its been for hours at a time. Even my old stock phenom II cooling kept going. Thats one reason why I think you worry to much about temps metaschima, they are almost always overstated.....

I know the stock i5 fan is a bit small and noisy, but it is quite adequate and keeps the temperature low enough for me. I did consider upgrading, but I don't see any need to ATM. Heck my older Core 2 Quad ran at 40-45 C idle, so I'm good with the current temperatures. My i5 model is i5-4670.

Just something to think about...if you go with air cooling, try to have more fans blowing in to the case than out. That way, it has a slightly higher pressure inside the case, and air will flow out of the cracks in the case, not in. That might help with dust, if dust is a problem for you.

Just my 2 cents.

I agree. I used to have them pointing outwards, but the dust got unbearable. Having them pointing in with some space to let the air out reduces dust to almost zero. So, yeah, I'm only pointing them inwards from now on.

Well, I think you're also suppossed to have a general airflow from front to back, and bottom to top. That way, the air is always moving, especially over the heatsinks.

Surely in a decent case air will only really come in through the intakes which are screened? So you could just use fans blowing out and achieve the same thing? If you don't have a decent case then, probably, that ought to be your next purchase anyhow?
The above typed as somebody with a bad, partially dust-filled, case.