Budget air vs budget water cooling (again)

[Captain Shiny]

Hi!
Some time ago I asked a similar question here and I didn't really get a decicive answer, unfortunately. It was more like medium budget air cooling vs budget watercooling but that's close enough.
Now I found this article on PCPer which actually clarifies the current state of affairs in terms of water vs air cooling a bit more - at least in the lower price brackets: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Cases-and-Cooling/Cooler-Master-Seidon-120V-Liquid-CPU-Cooler-Review
Interestingly the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO is quieter and on overclocks even quite a bit cooler than the Cooler Master Seidon 120V.
Now, the Cooler Master Seidon 120V is one of the cheapest prefilled 120mm watercoolers and I'd love to see how a Corsair H60 would fair against the 212 EVO but I guess there wouldn't be much of a difference between watercoolers with the same kind of radiator.
Personally I would rather go with a Scythe Ashura Shadow (cause it looks cool) or a Corsair H60 (Cause it's from Corsair, I guess?).
But if I take the above mentioned review into account, the Scythe cooler (140mm, 6 heatpipes) should absolutely burry the H60 in terms of cooling performance and noise levels or am I wrong? Also it's much cheaper. Your opinions/educated guesses?

 

[barnsley]

The Seidon 120v is utter crap. I'd personally say out of the two you should choose the one which looks the best. With the air cooler it'll be very quiet but maybe a few degrees warmer whereas the h60 will be cooler but quite a bit louder unless you change the fan.

 

[Captain Shiny]

The Seidon 120v is utter crap.

Cause of the pump, radiator or both?

 

[barnsley]

Cause of the pump, radiator or both?

Poor build quality, noisy parts, looks awful and has a high failure rate. So everything really .

 

[Captain Shiny]

Poor build quality, noisy parts, looks awful and has a high failure rate. So everything really .

I see, thx. Good to know.
Okay, back to topic - so any reasonable 120mm or 140mm aircooler (around 40€) is quieter than a 120mm AIO Watercooler?

 

[barnsley]

I see, thx. Good to know.
Okay, back to topic - so any reasonable 120mm or 140mm aircooler (around 40€) is quieter than a 120mm AIO Watercooler?

Depends on what fans the AIO is running tbh. I'd look into BeQuiet!,Phanteks,NZXT and Scythe (they seem to be the quietest in my opinion). Tom Did a review of a BeQuiet one which could be a very good option for you . Here is the review.

 

[Wraith]

The BeQuiet dark slim that Tom reviewed was a great cooler, and I can also confirm steer clear of the Seidons the pumps are terrible very high failure rate and also take in mind Cooler Master no longer manufacture them.... now the only AIOs they make are the Eisberg and Neptons.

 

[Captain Shiny]

Okay, good to know about the seidon. But as for the dark slim - I can't imagine how that would perform better than an Ashura - the cooler has lesser heatpipes and is a bit smaller in diameter - I don't think that any fan can compensate that.
It has to cool some kind of unlockable I5 in the future (haven't decided, yet what to get), btw and I'm aiming for moderate overclocks on that. So in the end the most important scale for me is cooling performance/noise in conjunction with each other (and I do use mainboard controlled fanspeeds, btw.) or in other words temperatures to rpm to noise levels. And design, of course. And I always try to find the best low cost compromise between these things - otherwise I'd go for an H100i but that is too expensive for me.

 

[Wraith]

With overclocking in mind, and so long as you don't mind the colour. The Noctua NH-D14 or the newer D15, best in class air coolers.

 

[Captain Shiny]

With overclocking in mind, and so long as you don't mind the colour. The Noctua NH-D14 or the newer D15, best in class air coolers.

I know, but those are too expensive, too ugly and too bulky for me. And it certainly is not a "low cost compromise". Noctua is premium and they charge premium.
Edit: Also, a comparable Noctua cooler which uses my preferred formfactor would be the Noctua NH-U14s (which is also way too expensive - it's around 30€ more than comparable models from Scythe/thermalright/Alpenföhn, etc.)

Edit 2: Another thought came up in favour of an AIO watercooler like the H60 - in theory heat buildup from the cpu inside the case wouldn't be much of a problem anymore since the hot air gets dissipated by design, right? Propably better to have another exhaust for the GPU but airflow should be much easier to manage and I wouldn't need as many casefans which would qualify the extra cost for the watercooler. Well, in theory - I have no way to test that unfortunately, otherwise I wouldn't have to ask as much. So, that true? As a case a Xigmatek aquila would be my first choice at the moment, btw.