Air cooling advice required

[Tim]

I'm planning a new build, going to ditch the water cooling setup. Too much of a time consumption as far as maintenance for me. Aside from occasionally cleaning dust of of my box, I really don't want to open it up for any other reason unless absolutely necessary.

What's currently the cream of the crop as far as air cooling an i7 930 these days?

EDIT: Also, what's the thermal paste of choice these days?

 

[FishAk]

The H50 cools as good as the best air coolers, with two fans, for about the same price. But it's small, so it's easy to work around, and doesn't restrict airflow to the rest of the board. It comes with top-of-the-line paste pre-installed. Very quiet with a couple Noctua NF-P12s on it.

 

[modestninja]

The cream of the crop air coolers are the Noctua DH-14, the Venemous X and the Megahalems. The H50 mentioned above with replacement fans is a little worse at high temperatures than those 3 aircoolers.

If you have the room and the money, the DH-14 can't be beat. I personally went with the Megahalems because I caught it on sale and my ram was (most likely) too tall for the DH-14.

As for TIM, there are quite a few within a degree of each in performance but I believe the top one in most tests is made by Shin Etsu (I forget which one off the top of my head, maybe G7510?) Other ones in the same neighborhood would be OCZ Freeze, AC MX-3, IC-7, Gelid Extreme.

Personally, I'd skip the IC-7 since it'll scrub the IHS on the CPU clean and go with one of the other ones since they're aluminum oxide so not electrically conductive.

 

[Tim]

Thanks guys.

 

[FishAk]

The Noctua DH-14 is a great cooler- except for the fact that it's so huge.

The reviews I see, show the DH-14 with two fans, pitted against the H50 with a single fan. I suppose that's reasonable, since that's how they come stock. However, if you slap another fan on the H50, you get about a 4C drop in CPU temp. Of course you could slap another fan on the DH-14 if you have enough room, but wer're talking 7" outside fan to outside fan. Another fan on the H50 isn't so unrealistic. With two fans on the H50, it matches or even beets the DH-14 with two fans. But that's just the CPU. The H50 also allows the rest of the board to stay cooler as well, because the airflow isn't blocked by a huge tower.