120mm vs 240mm vs 360mm

[NightHawk23]

Hi, just asking would my H80 make a diffrence from a H100 or a custom 360 rad loop? If so by how much?

Thanks in advance!

[dandelioneater]

the more radiator surface area, the better the cooling capacity.

H80 < H100 < custom 360 rad

[Masteroderus]

It depends on the heat load. If you are just cooling one component quite often a 120mm rad will cool about as well as a 360.

Having a 360 vs a 120 does allow for a quieter setup (counterintuitive i know!) by allowing you to use three sub 20 dba fans vs something around 30. dba is logarithmic. An increase from 20 to 30 is actually a ten-fold increase.

So a h80 vs a h100 vs 360. Main difference is you can cool one component more quietly with the h100 vs h80. A custom 360 loop allows for very very quiet cooling of one component, and allows for expansion to say up to 2 video cards, cpu and a motherboard block. However, the noise of the fans will be related to how many components you have to cool, and how thick of a 360 rad you can cram in your tower.

For the money the h100 is my pick as a 360 loop is more than 3x the cost.

[FlyZ]

If it's just CPU, I would say not much if you're not heat limited. However, 360 will allow you to go silent and have heat capacity if you wanted to add more components to your loop.

Beauty of a custom loop is you can add to it to cool whatever you want. Start small and slowly add stuff

[Dragonstongue]

also depends on the fans you are using, the quieter ones tend not to have the greatest volume of airflow, so quiet as heck, but reduced heat capacity as well as the heat is not able to be blown away, however, up the fans to something that has more airflow and very good static pressure and it will most certainly keep the chip very cool, obviously noisier though.

I think H80 with push/pull will work well, if you go the push/pull route, some fans from xigmatech(CLF series) Coolermaster Blademaster 76.2 cfm, Scythe Kaze or Typhoons, all really depends, its hard to get monstrous cooling with next to no noise. From my understanding, the stock fans on H series coolers work very well, but they are also very loud when they ramp up, something that is tweakable with a custom loop, as you obviously can choose your own rad that is optimized for less pressure needed, thereby quieter, heck, you can even go multiple smaller rads with almost silent or totaly silent cooling minus the pump of course :)

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by Dragonstongue

also depends on the fans you are using, the quieter ones tend not to have the greatest volume of airflow, so quiet as heck, but reduced heat capacity as well as the heat is not able to be blown away, however, up the fans to something that has more airflow and very good static pressure and it will most certainly keep the chip very cool, obviously noisier though.

I think H80 with push/pull will work well, if you go the push/pull route, some fans from xigmatech(CLF series) Coolermaster Blademaster 76.2 cfm, Scythe Kaze or Typhoons, all really depends, its hard to get monstrous cooling with next to no noise. From my understanding, the stock fans on H series coolers work very well, but they are also very loud when they ramp up, something that is tweakable with a custom loop, as you obviously can choose your own rad that is optimized for less pressure needed, thereby quieter, heck, you can even go multiple smaller rads with almost silent or totaly silent cooling minus the pump of course :)

Fans vs radiator solely depends on the type of radiator. Some radiators are close finned while others are a lot more open. In the case of a close finned radiator a higher static fan will work better but where its a open finned radiator a low powered fan will work just fine.