I’m looking at buying a new water cooler. I currently have a Corsair H55i due to space limitations with my previous cabinet. I have now upgraded to a larger cabinet (Fractal Define XL R2), and I should be able to fit a larger cooler now.

With my current setup (i8700k), an OC to about 4.5 GHz is the maximum I can achieve without overheating the CPU.

I have looked Corsair H100i Pro, but I have not found any comparison between that and my current cooler, so I don’t know the effect of making the upgrade.

Does anyone have experience with that cooler, or maybe could recommend something else?

It’s a good cooler I think, I’m using one with a overclocked 9700k to 4.9.

with fans in silent mode, 700rpm I think, still does max 72’c.

been a while since a last played about with it, but turning the fans up to just a whisper drops the temps to well within acceptable limits.

i think the 9700 might run hotter than 8700k to begin with so there may be some comparison there.

Thanks for your feedback!

Another question; where is the best place to put the radiator? With my new cabinet, I can fit it either on the top without any problem, and maybe in the front.

I have mine on top. I didn’t want it in behind the front case fans, restricting air flow through the case. (H500)

 

H100i Pro is pretty old at this point, if you insist on using Corsair you should look at the H150i or H115i Platinum models.  Otherwise, EVGA, NZXT, and EK are all great options as well.  

Best place for the radiator is at front, pulling fresh air in and then let it flow out at the top.

If you place it at the top, you either pull already warmer air from inside out through the radiator, or try to push warm air down in the case. That is the reverse direction warm air normaly flows.

What CPU temps should I be looking at? What is a good average temp and what temp should I not go over?

I've now installed H100i Pro. I first tried on the top of the cabinet, but I was not happy with the performance (about the same temperature I had with the H55i). I then tried putting in the front, and it got a bit better. A simple overclock to 4,8 GhZ using Intel Extreme Utility gave me a max temperature of 87 degrees, but the average at 100% load was slightly below 80 degrees. I'm not an expert at overclocking, but I'll watch a few YouTube videos and see if I'm able to go any higher.

Aaron, i don't have good answer for you, but I think most Intel CPUs will start to throttle the CPU at 100 degrees. So i guess you can run your CPU at 99 degrees without destroying the CPU, for a short while. In the long run it might not give the best life expectancy for the CPU. For myself, I try to at least keep below 90 degrees. But I guess somebody else in here have a better answer-

On 4/18/2020 at 11:07 PM, Marius_S said:

A simple overclock to 4,8 GhZ using Intel Extreme Utility gave me a max temperature of 87 degrees

Was that with a stress test or whilst gaming?

1 hour ago, vortex681 said:

Was that with a stress test or whilst gaming?

That was during stress testing. I did see aftewards using P3D spikes up to 100 degrees. After some research I have now turned off hyper threading and that seemed to have reduced the temperature by 10-15 degrees during stress testing. I haven’t tested it with P3D yet.