For our rigs running WCG furiously and long term one sollicited piece of equipment is the CPU cooler. If we want to overclock strongly then he better be good but also reliable.

When I started with my first rigs (medium tower) I installed as a standard air CPU cooler the Asus Triton 88. It was excellent for the 1366 socket and allowed for good overclocking of the 980X but not extreme. I still have some of them running after three years and they are dying slowly. In fact their limitation is that the internal fan cannot be changed and when due to ball bearing wear the fan starts to vibrate and wobble, it starts scratching the fins and at this point the cooler is dead. This is now what is happening to all of them.

I have two frame size for my rigs, a medium tower (ATX format board) and a small tower for microATX board. The Triton 88 being too large, the best I could find for the small tower was the Zalman CNPS10X Extreme which just fit to the millimeter into the existing volume. Installing it is a real pain. Running at max speed the noise is not a problem and the result is excellent on the 980X at 4.0 Ghz.

Over the last year I tested a few replacement for the Triton, like the Corsair water series H80, H100, but these finally have not given satisfaction at all. I still have on H80 running with acceptable performance but not better than with a good air unit. Another H80 died when the cooling circuit stopped to work. The H100 was marred by a poor geometric design that did not allow a perfect match on the CPU head, hence poor cooling, and the very large radiator is nearly impossible to install properly except in a specific Corsair casing.

When recently my H80 died on Pluto rig, by chance my thermal protection on the Intel 980X did switch off the rig at 101 Deg Centigrade. It was amazing to look at the core temp rise slowly from 25 up to 101 and then poof. The 980X is really a robust CPU with an excellent design, because I had to do a few test before understanding what happened. So the CPU did switch off at 101 a few times, and now this CPU runs at 55 Deg flawlessly.

My new standard for the larger rig is now the Noctua DH14 with two fans, one of 120mm and one of 140mm. The two fans can be taken out and changed. So as long as replacement fans are available this cooler if properly mantained could last many years. I have a few running now on the 980Xs and one on my unique 3960X and they have the best cooling performance I ever had. The only limitation is that you have to install DDR3 Ram with a low profile. You cannot use the sticks that have large cooling fins or a ventilator cooler block on top like the Corsair.

The Noctua is not cheap but it is in the Triton 88 price range so amortization will be excellent.