Question / Help Best cooling for 4770k and streaming?

[Yamiino]

Hello,

I know this is not a hardware support forum but guess you guys are the best source of information for this matter since a lot of you do streaming.

I noticed my 4770k haswell processor was overheating reaching up to 100C when streaming guild wars 2 and final fantasy xiv. The store that sold the computer to me told me that the Maximus vi hero MOBO did an overclock on it, making the intell stock heat sink not sufficient, in the end making it cause a 0x00000124 blue screen of death.

Now, I called intel and they told me that if I wanted to use the 4770k for gaming id need a different cooling system. So I have investigated a bit and found some good reviews on the Noctua NH D14. The store showed me a small water cooling system for the processor only, which when I took the PC to them was reaching 90C maximum with stress testing the CPU, meaning it would not go any higher than that, yet still too hot. Not sure what are the new readings with no overclock.

So this brings me here with the question: what cooler do you think would be the best to get? (without reaching a complete water cooling system)

Is the Noctua NH D14 enough for this job?

Thank you a lot :)

 

[Neski]

That is very odd. Does your CPU really reach 100% load? I use a 3770k overclocked at 4.6GHz and it doesnt reach 100% ever. I use a H100i and it never goes over 60C. I would check to see if your CPU is utilizing any other resources that are causing it to do that or if some setting in your OBS are faulty.

 

[Yamiino]

Yeah it's the CPU, on idle it was reaching 50-60 C :( with the stock cooler, without broadcasting playing guild wars 2 on max settings was getting 80-90 C the issue was pretty much while broadcasting since it is CPU intensive and ram as well but tested it with memtest and there were no issues with that.

I heard haswell CPUs tend to overheat but when the sales man told me that 60 C on idle was normal readings I almost laughed on his face.

 

[Neski]

Haha I might have too. Idle should be around 30-35. If your case can fit it, I would definitely get the Noctua. A third party CPU cooler is one of those "must haves" for streaming.

 

[pacholol]

Well first this temperatures can be because of bad thermal paste. Second : I think that Noctua cooling reachs a price of 70€ but what I did it's buy a cooling system for 50 euro. I dont think how good is it but yesterday we where comparing with a guy from this forum that was runing the stock cooler on i5 3570K and me runing the Antec h2o on my i5 3570K. My temperature was arround 50C all the time (or less) and his was arround 70C. (even my was OC to 4.2 and his was runing stock turbo boost to 3.9).
I also installed this antec to my friend who had the same system as mine but runing stock cooler and the temperature went down from 80-85 to 60 (while playing bf4). So what I can say is that I'm very happy with water cooling system. As I said I it was for 50 euro now it can be even cheaper. Antec H2O 620 it's the full name look for it.

My temperatures where while streaming.

 

[JediAAK]

I have NH-D14. I hardly believe there is a better performing model even today (This Noctua model is 3 years old now, but still top of the top).

 

[alpinlol]

what reterad would oc an cpu with the stock cooler since haswell is running pretty hot anyway ... actually every noctua cooler should do its job on at least 4,5ghz but some corsair h100i will literally do the same but its an water cooling and they tend to be quite loud compared to noctuas

 

[Yamiino]

Thanks all for your input, I will look at both the h100i and the noctua, let's see if the shop has both so I can compare them while stress testing to 100% the CPU.

Pacholol: I think that's the one the guy at the store tested watercooling with o.o will check that one out as well.

Alpinlol: No one did an overclock on it, not the guy that set everything up (I watched him set it up) nor I (got home and started using it). It seems that the mother board Maximus vi hero did it automatically to get a better performance from the CPU. This motherboard as well as most Maximus series are one of the best mobos to do overclocking.

 

[alpinlol]

asus got an build in oc tool but this only works if you actually start it and tell it to oc then again this usually does little stress tests to get an approx temperature profile

 

[Yamiino]

So just wanted to update on the matter, I got my PC back today and these were the results:

1. Purchased a new case for it, I had a Cooler Master Elite 431 Mid Tower, the guy at the store told me if I wanted to purchase a new cooling system, I'd need more space, ended up getting a stupidly giant Cooler Master HAF 922 e_e

2. Tossed the Intel 4770k stock cooling system to the garbage and purchased a Corsair H90, because they did not have a "cheap" case to get the H100i to fit in, but I was all game to get it lol, the next case was about 100% more expensive than the one I got.

Now, the results with this so far, while streaming and running guild wars 2 at maximum settings... was... a winner of 38-45C, a total of 65% heat decrease from the stock cooling to this. Man, seriously? xD I'm more than pleased with these temps.

Now, let's see if the blue screen of death 0x00000124 stops appearing, if it keeps appearing like last week it won't be a cooling problem and they will have to replace any faulty hardware since they already checked it for a week and found nothing suspicious but that weird overclock. Which by the way, it tried to happen again, the MOBO bios poped up and asked me if I wanted to load the defaults, when I was about to save I noticed an "Auto" increase of the clock of the CPU to 4.2 Ghz instead of 3.5 Ghz, I mean, sure now I guess I could OC it a bit, but I won't mess with it for now until I know it's the heat which was causing the BSOD.

Thanks a lot everyone for pointing me to the right direction :) <3

 

[Krazy]

The 0x124 stop error is the bane of all overclocking, because it can unfortunately mean a multitude of different things. Very frustrating to track down. Can be anything from to low vcore, to RAM derping out, to even GPU issue.

 

[alpinlol]

if you still have bluescreens then either give it a little more core voltage or actually put everything back to stock

 

[FerretBomb]

Personally, I don't see much point to the all-in-one water cooling systems; they don't have the volume needed to provide an effective thermal-buffer, heatsoak easily as a result, don't allow you to add a RAM, northbridge or GPU waterblock to the loop, and more just serve so the owner can say 'I have a water-cooled system!' for pseudo-geek points. Possibly handy if you have a very tight-spaces setup (such as a HTPC media-center case) where a larger ducted air-cooling system is unfeasible. Only actual use I can see for them though.

Personally, my go-to is the CoolerMaster Hyper 212+ (or for newer systems, the CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO). A bit on the large side, but it's been able to take whatever I throw at it and keep things nice and cool, without even spinning up the fans past bare-idle (~800rpm on 120mm fans with a 2Krpm optimal duty cycle). If you have the space, it's what I'd go for every time.

 

[Yamiino]

The 0x124 stop error is the bane of all overclocking, because it can unfortunately mean a multitude of different things. Very frustrating to track down. Can be anything from to low vcore, to RAM derping out, to even GPU issue.

Yes that's what I investigated, I took 2 weeks to test every single piece of hardware, even the hard drives lol, I don't believe the GPU is faulty left it on valley benchmark overnight with no problems and tested it with some other stress testing tools with an average of 45 fps on ultra, with ok temps of 70-80. Got a GTX 770 4 gb wind force.
The ram, tested it with the built in windows tool and memtest, I believe is the name... And nothing came out.
The hard drives, nothing.
The CPU, it was doing all fine under 100% load! but once reaching 90% or higher it was 95-100C so that's when my eyes dropped on.

if you still have bluescreens then either give it a little more core voltage or actually put everything back to stock

Left everything on stock, don't want to mess with that for a while xD

Personally, I don't see much point to the all-in-one water cooling systems; they don't have the volume needed to provide an effective thermal-buffer, heatsoak easily as a result, don't allow you to add a RAM, northbridge or GPU waterblock to the loop, and more just serve so the owner can say 'I have a water-cooled system!' for pseudo-geek points. Possibly handy if you have a very tight-spaces setup (such as a HTPC media-center case) where a larger ducted air-cooling system is unfeasible. Only actual use I can see for them though.

Personally, my go-to is the CoolerMaster Hyper 212+ (or for newer systems, the CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO). A bit on the large side, but it's been able to take whatever I throw at it and keep things nice and cool, without even spinning up the fans past bare-idle (~800rpm on 120mm fans with a 2Krpm optimal duty cycle). If you have the space, it's what I'd go for every time.

They don't, but a complete water cooling system is about x3 times more expensive since you need a homungus case and radiators, pumps, special stuff for the GPU, which for this model has not arrived to where I live. As well for the RAM.

Yes if you want to have a water cooled machine it's better to buy the hardware that is already prepared for that, if you adapt the wind cooled hardware to water cooling you can have a higher leak probability, which would kill let's say the GPU x.x

I asked them if they had the noctua nh-d14 unfortunately they did not have it in stock, so it was either a Corsair H80, H90 or H100 which didn't fit my homungus case lol. But this system did wonders and I'm happy with it, I won't be overclocking much, probably to 4.2 if it can handle the temps but for now, 3.5 will do the job I need it to ;P