Watercooling vs fan cooling

[paradamed]

Hi guys. I need some help makiing a choice. Im planning to overclock my cpu. Im in doubt if I should try watercooling or just stick to traditional cooling systems. Im aiming for either Noctua NH-D14 or Noctua NH-U12P SE2. I watched some reviews and it seems noctua produces the best coolers in the market, low noise, low temperatures. Anyway Im in doubt if I should go for watercooling. I would like to know some things pls. My system is a i5 760 (word has it that it can go as fast as 4ghz with no problem) and I have an antec 900 case. What would you suggest? WOuld you go for watercooling or would you stick to traditional cooling? I read some advantages on both. I read that systems with watercooling may have overheated memory ram cause there is less airflow inside the case. What about the noise? Is the pump silent or does it produce the same amount of noise as a fan? Also, will the noctua fan make more noise than the intel fan? The problem of watercooling in Brazil is also the availability. My local store right now has no watercooling system. Should I wait or should I stick to traditional cooling? Is watercooling for cpu cards also recommended (I have sli gtx 460)? Im also planning to buy those fan speed regulators for the fans in my case. I checked this product Zalman ZM-MFC2 and it seems like a good product, it has four temperature sensors and 4 controllers for fans. Is it worth it to have these controllers?

[Crazyeyesreaper]

Water cooling is great its silent usually but requires space inside the case and most all in one kits are garbage, and a single 120mm rad isnt enough for todays cpus meaning if you want to go water cooling you need to spend $150-200 for quality parts to actually get performance WORTH the price

best air coolers on the market

Prolimatech Megahalems and its variations like the supermega and megashadow
Cogage Arrow
Thermalright ultra 120
Thermaltake FRIO *best budget air cooler usually half the price of a Noctua or Prolimatech but performs pretty much on par and comes with 2 fans that have controllers on them aka you can max the fans for cooling or lower there speeds for noise control.
Thermolab Baram isnt to bad
cheapest 2 fan setup for decent cooling is the Coolermaster Hyper 212+ replace the stock fan on it with a yateloon medium and add a second yateloon medium it can for about $38 usd beat coolers in the $55-80usd range out of box.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/T...ke/Frio/5.html

the above review shows some of the coolers you should be looking at and there performance there also using a CPU thats roughly the same as yours besides the 1 multi step down.

the Noctua NH D14 = $89 usd Thermaltake Frio = $47 usd

nocutas coolers are great i love there quality but the price is extremely high for most users, since your in brazil water cooling also dosent make a whole lot of sense since water is only as good as your ambient temps if you have high ambients water wont do you alot of good unless your home is air conditioned in which case its awesome. but yea in your situation id take a TT FRIO its cheap comes with 2 fans and everything youll need, performance is good and at half the cost of a Noctua it just makes more sense.

[paradamed]

Thanks for your help. I think I will stick to the fan cooling system. What about these speed regulators for fans and sensors? Do you have any recommendation in special? Also do you have any idea if the Frio or the noctua coolers have a big increase in noise compared to the intel original fan?

[Crazyeyesreaper]

FRIO is loud but again both fans have rheostat aka small knobs you can turn 1 way or the other to controll fan speed manually to whatever sound lvls you find acceptable / performance lvls you find acceptable, Nocuta fans are always silent but that comes at a cost to airflow.

[Big Boss]

The XSPC Watercooling kits are actually quite good and very popular.

[Crazyeyesreaper]

they are indeed to bad there pump res combo is well known to die early deaths and in some cases fry cpus and gpus in the loop those $120 kits are great but reliability is not its strong suit, there less reliable then the leak prone 1st gen Coolit Domino coolers i cant deny while they work there great performance for the money, but if fans die a heatsink can still handle heat at idle, a water kit with no moving water = potential death for a PC