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Good day, fellow members of the site!
I've recently put together the majority of my P.C. build with the following specs:
I5-3570K
8GB RAM (It's a fairly low-profile corsair kit.)
AsRock Z77 Extreme 4
Generic disk drive (not really relevant here)
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB
and, crucially an Antec 300 mid-tower case.
The Antec case has 1 120mm exhaust fan at the rear, 1 140mm exhaust fan at the top and 3 120mm intake fans, 1 at the side and 2 at the front. Here's a couple of pictures, so you get an idea (neither of these are my build). It will just about fit most CPU coolers (even just about squeezing in a legendary Noctua NH-d14!)
My case has a 120mm gelid fan at the side and 1 120mm asaka fan at the front (I plan to add another soon).
Anyway, I'm trying to find a cooler for this case, but with some rather specific conditions:
1. Something that's easy to mount and un-mount.
I'm planning on taking this case 300 miles north to uni in September, and back home in the holidays, and I want to remove the CPU cooler from the motherboard when I'm moving it, to avoid it falling off and/or tearing the motherboard PCB. So, something that unmounts with just a couple of quick, easy screws would be ideal. Something that's as difficult to put on and off as the Intel stock fan would not. Which leads me onto....
2. Nothing too big and heavy.
University, for those of you that have never been there, is not exactly the most sedate and serene of environments. Considering that my motherboard has already been proven to break from CPU cooler load in even lab conditions, I really don't want to push my luck by attaching half a brick to the motherboard considering how likely my computer is to take the odd knock while in my dorm room. So, nothing too heavy, please.
3. £40 or less
What can I say? I'm cheap. I'm not going for an ultra-crazy-gigga-mega 509872093487 bazillion GHz overclock. Just 4.5/4.6 would be fine. So something in a reasonable price range would be good.
4. Something that performs well
Yeah, this is kind of a given. I'd really like a CPU cooler that keeps the core cool without creating too much noise. If you suggest a cooler, could you please give me a link to some benchmarks showing how good it is at cooling, and how much noise it makes in doing so? Having benchmarks to show just how good a cooler is makes it a really tempting buy.
And finally,
5. Air cooling and not liquid cooled
I know liquid cooling performs better than air and makes less noise, but it's just not for me. I'd be too neurotically freaked out by any strange noise that came from my P.C.. Irrational, I know, but if it was a rational thought, it probably wouldn't be in my head.....
Many thanks for reading all of this, and for any help you may offer.
Regards,
Here_for_cookie
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