Free space is definitely nice! Huh–the temperature is around 55-60, though. Maybe I do need to be looking at a better fan at some point…
Well fair warning if/when you do upgrade your cooler: Modern coolers are huge. Looking more closely at the picture on amazon of your cooler, it’s a little row of metal fins with a fan sitting on top of it. No surprise it’s struggling.
Modern coolers are a gigantic tower of metal fins like 5 inches tall with a fan clipped to the side of it. Check out the first two pictures on Newegg for the hyper 212 showing with and without the fan. It sticks out from the motherboard pretty much the entire width of the case.
High end coolers are the same height and twice as wide, and have two fans on either side in a push-pull configuration. Fortunately the 10400 only needs a “slim” single-fan cooler. The recommended cooler is the hyper 212, which is $40 on amazon with prime delivery.
I suspect cooler effectiveness boils down to a simple function of metal fin surface area. More fins = better cooling. Looking at newegg for cheaper coolers, most are physically smaller. Instead of a fin tower tall enough for a 120mm fan, they have 92mm fans. I would stay away from those. 120mm for sure.
Googling for best budget air coolers, the hyper 212 tops most lists ($40 is relatively cheap) but also on those lists is something called the AresGame River 5, which is listed on amazon for $20 with prime shipping and free returns. That link is to the RGB version, which looks kind of hideous. The black version doesn’t say “River 5” but it seems to be the same model, just no rainbows.
I’m pretty sure it will fit your case. One of the Amazon images shows it being 6.3 inches tall, which is the same height of the hyper 212. And pcpartpicker showed no issue with adding the hyper 212 and your case to the same build. But your case was out of stock, and who knows, maybe it doesn’t apply compatibility checks to unpurchasable items.
Basically you need 6.4 (preferably 6.5) inches from the cpu to the far wall of the case. Your case should probably have that, but it’s only 7.5" wide in total. You might want to measure to make sure regardless what cooler you pick.
If you compare the hyper 212 pictures from newegg to the river 5 amazon pictures, so you can see that river 5’s fin tower is missing the first several layers of fins. No doubt this directly translates into less cooling. It’s probably enough, I think? Half the price with prime shipping and free returns, might be worth a gamble.
Missed the edit window: If your case is in fact too narrow, then it just has to be a smaller fan. And actually, googling around reveals the following article:
The very first one listed is the ARCTIC Freezer 7X for $24 on Amazon. A legit recommendation for your specific cpu, and with only a 100mm fan it claims to be a stubby 5.22" high. Fairly safe to say it would fit in your case sight unseen, no measurements needed, I would think.
Searching the amazon reviews for “10400” shows:
Seems like a good first try. Prime shipping and free returns like all of them.
The top review complains that the mounting bracket needs another 6-7mm of space outside the cpu socket footprint. Looking at your motherboard on newegg, it could be tight. But again, free returns.
I have the good fortune of having a giant of a case (Corsair Vengeance C70), and even then the 212 was a will-it-or-won’t-it fit. @EllisDee or others, how do users with much smaller cases but hot CPUs cope? Do they go liquid? I must admit I considered it when I realized how large and gangly the contraption looked (and my case has mounts for liquid cooling).
From what I’ve seen, including the case on my old computer, much smaller cases are much older cases, back when air cooler height wasn’t a thing yet so the only width requirement was to house an optical drive. 7.5" is sufficient for that, so no surprise that my old case from 2013 and LHOD’s case from 2011 are both exactly 7.5" wide.
So the answer is typically you gotta buy a new case. Your case is quite large, agreed, but nowadays it’s just a “normal” size case. You have to go with Compact versions to approach the svelte profile of older cases and you’ll still end up an inch wider. I consider an inch wider to be pretty significant. “Normal” modern cases are multiple inches wider, which seems nuts to me.
When I first starting researching a new computer of course I started looking at cases, since that’s what I cared most about. (The noise!) At first I amusingly looked for cases with an optical drive bay. The very idea now makes me laugh, but I ended up really liking the Fractal Define 7. It took several days before I realized it was 2" wider than my old computer and like 5 or 6 inches deeper (!!), neither of which would work for the space my old computer occupied.
That’s when I constructed a table of measurements, and to my surprise it turns out that 7.5" wide cases (seemingly the previous standard) just don’t exist anymore. That’s now more like “Low Profile” territory, like a small form factor entertainment center you put in a tv room, where you’re also building for silence.
Here’s the measurement table I came up with researching cases I liked either because of or until I noted their size. I’ve added the non-compact Define 7 I originally liked until realizing its size and your Vengeance C70 for context. (I went with a Define 7 Compact.) Sorted smallest to largest:
| Case | Width | Height | Depth | List Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phanteks Eclipse P300A | 7.90" | 18.00" | 15.90" | 59.99 |
| Cooler Master NR600 (mesh) | 8.20" | 18.60" | 18.80" | 69.99 |
| Fractal Meshify 2 Compact Black | 8.27" | 18.70" | 16.69" | 109.99 |
| Fractal Define 7 Compact Black | 8.27" | 18.66" | 16.81" | 98.99 |
| Phanteks Eclipse P400A | 8.30" | 18.30" | 18.50" | 69.99 |
| Fractal Meshify C | 8.54" | 17.83" | 16.26" | 79.99 |
| Lian Li Lancool II Mesh Performance | 9.02" | 19.45" | 18.82" | 109.99 |
| Corsair 4000D Airflow | 9.06" | 18.35" | 17.83" | 94.99 |
| be quiet! Pure Base 500 | 9.09" | 18.23" | 17.72" | 69.9 |
| Corsair Vengeance C70 | 9.13" | 19.72" | 20.98" | 159.99 |
| Fractal Define 7 | 9.45" | 18.70" | 21.54" | 194.99 |
| SilverStone FARA R1 | 10.63" | 17.56" | 15.35" | 62.44 |
| be quiet! Silent Base 802 | 11.06" | 21.77" | 21.22" | 159.9 |
This is one of the reasons I like the P300A so much: It’s tiny by modern standards at under 8" wide. (Also NexusGamers reviewed relatively positively, I think.)
If all cases were exactly the same size, my very favorite case by a pretty wide margin was the Silent Base 802, but Jesus fucking Christ, that thing is over 3.5" wider than my old computer, which was only 7.5" wide total. Half again! Just imagine it next to your very large Vengeance C70: The 802 is 2" wider, 2" taller, and half an inch deeper. That’s gotta be satire, right? Who wants a case that big? Yeesh.
I also really like the Lian Li Lancool II Mesh, but it’s just too deep for where my computer sits. (Couldn’t go much past 17", so almost 19 was right out.)
EDIT: I will note that the Dark Rock Slim, which is almost exactly the same size as the hyper 212, fits in my define 7 compact pretty easily. Does your case have stuff of the side door like a fan or something that makes the 212 a tight fit? Your case is almost a full inch wider than mine.
Liquid cooling helps. Or else there’s some fairly capable low profile coolers that work better than the stock coolers. Just things like a higher quality cooler having a better fan and a copper block with heat pipes can make a significant different over a “good enough” fan on an aluminum block with fins on top.
It also can just come down to what you can accept for temps and noise. After all, they have high performance gaming laptops; they just have a good deal of fan noise and put out a lot of heat. Technically, it’s only really an issue if the CPU is throttling during its workload. If the CPU can run at full speed until 90C and it only reaches 89C and stays there then you’re doing okay, provided the other factors aren’t an issue for you.
My home office is in temporary quarters while we reno our master bath, but I just peeked through the top vent holes and it looks like the distance between the top of the cooler and the clear plexi cover is less than one inch.
@Jophiel thanks. When I was rebuilding my PC ~a year ago I considered liquid cooling for a variety of reasons (with some variation of “cool”), but a knowledgeable cow-orker advised against it; “a leak is unlikely, but devastating”. So I went with the 212 for my 8700K.
Oh well that explains it. I have maybe half an inch clearance tops; probably less.
I was expecting to clear by like a few mm, so the over quarter inch I ended up with seemed spacious.
EDIT: Just peeked inside: It kind of looks more like the few mm’s I was expecting; less than a quarter inch. It’s really close. So now I’m thinking a 212 would not actually fit into a P300A, being over a quarter inch narrower than mine. EDIT 2: pcpartpicker doesn’t throw an objection. It’s gotta be a super tight fit if it fits at all. No sound insulation like mine but still.
In a big ole traditional tower, a moderate AIO isn’t better than a high end air cooler so, if you’re worried about the outside chance of a leak, I suppose you don’t lose anything from going with the air cooler. Maybe a little extra fan noise if you were going to exhaust through your radiator and now you need an extra exhaust fan. I actually have an 240mm AIO in my giant-ass case that you could raise a family in. But I could see the peace-of-mind tradeoff if you were worried about it.
But, in a small form factor PC, the difference between an AIO and the sort of air cooler you can fit in the case might be rather significant and an AIO is going to be the only way to bring it down 15C or below throttling levels. Depending on other factors, of course.
My son and I were talking about this. When I started building computers you had RLL and MFM hard drives, DMA and IRQ settings; jumpers to set. Today it’s all plug and play.
Well that was quick. greenmangaming has Hitman 2: Gold Edition for 86% off, $14.40 down from $100. And again it’s a steam key. Score!