Question CPU Cooling - Liquid or Air for my case

[Blu_ee]

Hi,

I currently have a Ryzen 5 3600 with the stock cooler on it currently. I am looking to upgrade the stock cooler.

However, I have a small problem. I can't decide if I should get an air or liquid cooler.
The problem with the liquid cooler is that I can't put it on the top of my case as according to Corsair pictures I can only put 2 fans on top. If I were to go liquid I would have to put the liquid cooler fans at the front which will then blow in hot air and 2 fans on top which will have to be exhaust so dust won't get in (I believe)

My specs are:
Motherboard: ROG Strix B450-F Gaming II
RAM: Cruical Ballistix 3600mhz CL16
GPU: Gigabyte RTX 2060
Fans: Deep cool RF120 3in1, 120mm
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600
Case: Corsair Spec-5

I may look into doing a overclock along with my GPU.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Heartbreaker]

I currently have a Ryzen 5 3600 with the stock cooler on it currently. I am looking to upgrade the stock cooler.

Liquid cooling seems like overkill for a 3600.

I would go with the standard budget cooler recommendation:

Deepcool Gammaxx 400 V2. It's about $20 on Amazon. Don't let the low price or name fool you. It's a massive upgrade over the stock cooler.

 

[Blu_ee]

Liquid cooling seems like overkill for a 3600.

I would go with the standard budget cooler recommendation:

Deepcool Gammaxx 400 V2. It's about $20 on Amazon. Don't let the low price or name fool you. It's a massive upgrade over the stock cooler.

Does that come with thermal paste? If it does, should I get a better one or if not, what thermal paste should I buy?

 

[damian101]

Don't waste your money on liquid cooling or an expensive air cooler for that hardware, it just doesn't produce enough heat to justify that.
If you plan to upgrade to both a much more power-hungry GPU and more power-hungry CPU in the future watercooling might make sense, as that helps reduce the air temperature in the case.
I don't see gaming CPUs getting much more power-hungry in the future. Quite the opposite actually. Unless they become massive APUs and replace dedicated GPUs, which will probably happen.
Anyway, unless you have some serious upgrade plans don't spend too much on a cooler upgrade. Even cheap aftermarket coolers for 20$ should be more than capable to quietly cool your CPU. I'm thinking of a single-fan 90mm-120mm cooler with 3-4 heatpipes. If you really want to save money you could get one of the "high-end" AMD stock coolers on the used market.

 

[damian101]

Does that come with thermal paste? If it does, should I get a better one or if not, what thermal paste should I buy?

If it doesn't come with thermal paste I can recommend Arctic MX-2. It's good and lasts long. In my opinion thermal paste only really matters for direct-die cooling, in which case I would go with liquid metal. For desktop CPUs with heatspreader expensive thermal paste is a waste of money in my opinion, that's even more true for an efficient CPU like the Ryzen 3600.

 

[Blu_ee]

Don't waste your money on liquid cooling or an expensive air cooler for that hardware, it just doesn't produce enough heat to justify that.
If you plan to upgrade to both a much more power-hungry GPU and more power-hungry CPU in the future watercooling might make sense, as that helps reduce the air temperature in the case.
I don't see gaming CPUs getting much more power-hungry in the future. Quite the opposite actually. Unless they become massive APUs and replace dedicated GPUs, which will probably happen.
Anyway, unless you have some serious upgrade plans don't spend too much on a cooler upgrade. Even cheap aftermarket coolers for 20$ should be more than capable to quietly cool your CPU. I'm thinking of a single-fan 90mm-120mm cooler with 3-4 heatpipes. If you really want to save money you could get one of the "high-end" AMD stock coolers on the used market.

Ok, thanks for the help. I don't plan on upgrading quite a lot. Whenever I do, which will most likely be a long time, I would definitely look into cooling.

 

[Heartbreaker]

Does that come with thermal paste? If it does, should I get a better one or if not, what thermal paste should I buy?

I have the cooler and just checked. It comes with a small one application pouch of thermal paste.