Air Cooling vs. Water Cooling
There are two main ways to chill your CPU: a heatsink with a fan on it, or a closed-loop liquid cooler (CLC). Unlike a custom loop, you don’t need to periodically drain and flush the system or check it for leaks. The “closed” part means that it’s sealed and integrated. This integration also reduces manufacturing costs and makes the setup much easier to install. If you want maximum overclocks, custom loops are the best way to go. But it’s a steep climb in cost for a modest improvement beyond what current closed loops can deliver.
But air coolers are not down for the count. They’re still the easiest to install and the cheapest. However, the prices between air and water are so close now that it’s worth taking a look at the field to determine what’s best for your budget.
THE BUDGET CLASS
THE TEST: To test the two cooling methods, we dropped them into a rig with a hex-core Intel Core i7-3960X overclocked to 4.25GHz on an Asus Rampage IV Extreme motherboard, inside a Corsair 900D. By design, it’s kind of a beast and tough to keep cool.
THE RESULTS: At this level, the Cooler Master 212 Evo is legend… ary. It runs cool and quiet, it’s easy to pop in, it can adapt to a variety of sockets, it’s durable, and it costs about 30 bucks. Despite the 3960X’s heavy load, the 212 Evo averages about 70 degrees C across all six cores, with a room temperature of about 22 C, or 71.6 F. Things don’t tend to get iffy until 80 C, so there’s room to go even higher. Not bad for a cooler with one 120mm fan on it.
Entry-level water coolers cost substantially more, unless you’re patient enough to wait for a fire sale. They require more materials, more manufacturing, and more complex engineering. The Cooler Master Seidon 120M is a good example of the kind of unit you’ll find at this tier. It uses a standard 120mm fan attached to a standard 120mm radiator (or “rad”) and currently has a street price of $60. The Cooler Master 212 Evo has arguably the best price-performance ratio around.
In order to meet an aggressive price target, you have to make some compromises. The pump is smaller than average, for example, and the copper block you install on top of the CPU is not as thick. The Seidon was moderately quieter, but we have to give the nod to the 212 Evo when it comes to raw performance.
THE PERFORMANCE CLASS
THE RESULTS: While a CLC has trouble scaling its manufacturing costs down to the budget level, there’s a lot more headroom when you hit the $100 mark. The NZXT Kraken X60 CLC is one of the best examples in this class; its dual-140mm fans and 280mm radiator can unload piles of heat without generating too much noise, and it has a larger pump and apparently larger tubes than the Seidon 120M. Our tests bear out the promise of the X60′s design, with its “quiet” setting delivering a relatively chilly 66 C, or about 45 degrees above the ambient room temp.
Is there any air cooler that can keep up? Well, we grabbed a Phanteks TC14PE, which uses two heatsinks instead of one, dual-140mm fans, and retails at $85-$90. It performed only a little cooler than the 212 Evo, but it did so very quietly, like a ninja. At its quiet setting, it trailed behind the X60 by 5 C. It may not sound like much, but that extra 5 C of headroom means a higher potential overclock. So, water wins the high end.
BENCHMARKS
Seidon 120M Quiet / Performance Mode
212 Evo Quiet / Performance Mode
Kraken X60 Quiet / Performance Mode
TC14PE Quiet / Performance Mode
Ambient Air
22.1 / 22.2
20.5 / 20
20.9 / 20.7
20 / 19.9
Idle
Temperature
38 / 30.7
35.5 / 30.5
29.7 / 28.8
32 / 28.5
Load
Temperature
78.3 / 70.8
70 / 67.3
66 / 61.8
70.3 / 68.6
Load – Ambient
56.2 / 48.6
49.5 / 47.3
45.1 / 41.1
50.3/ 48.7
All temperatures in degrees Celsius.
Material provided by: Alesya Orlova




