Conclusion
Our previous conclusion—that the best reason to use a compact liquid cooler is to make it easier to reach cable connectors that surround the CPU—is once again proven in today’s comparison. The biggest cooler wins, even though it’s an air cooler, and the second-biggest air cooler provides the same cooling performance as the slightly thinner liquid cooler when both are configured with the same high-speed fan.
Another interesting fact is that all three coolers functioned within 1° Celsius of competitors when the same fan was used. Appealing features of Rosewill’s FORT120, such as its direct-touch heat pipe design, appear to have little impact on actual performance, since its larger sink could fully account for such a small performance difference.
A third interesting result was that turning the exhaust fan backwards provided little benefit in CPU temperature and significantly increased the air temperature at the front of the motherboard. This is our punishment for violating the thermal principles of ATX mid-tower design. Defenders of the concept could point out that many cases have significantly more ventilation through the top panel, via two 120-140mm fans or a single larger fan, but the fact that most people don’t own those cases is something to keep in mind when trying to make nearly-universal recommendations.
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seems like air cooling will be here a long time...
Push/pull-equipped Megahalem/Megashadow is all you'll ever need - I don't see Intel topping 130W thermal again for quite a while. It's at the limit weight and size wise and with some fan speed control you can crank it for serious OC stints and dial back when running less aggressively.
Of course if the base of the TRUE or TRUE Black Rev C has been sorted (I'm not messing about with lapping when other people get it right first time) then I'll go with that as it's thinner than the Megahalem with only 1 degree difference.
"Reversing the exhaust fan as per Corsair’s H50 installation instructions has a significant impact on internal air temperature, increasing its rise over ambient by more than 100% compared to the original fan configuration."
No, degrees celcius are not scalar, the difference is nowhere near 100%.
On "real" watercooling we are seeing deltas of CPU temperature about 32-35C above the water temperature at CPU speeds around 4.2Ghz. In an average loop water temperature is around 10C above ambient, for a total of 45C above ambient. That can be halved easily enough, such that with 3x 120mm fans on a radiator running quiet fans can achieve temperatures around 40C above ambient.
The corsair solution isn't terrible, buts its not real watercooling.
True.
We need a review of real watercooling systems ... not these cheap low MBBTF kits designed for n00bs.
The continual reviews of cheap watercooling solutions is damaging the reputation of the quality watercooling systems providers, and their products are far better cooling solutions than the best of the heatpipe air coolers currently on offer.
May I suggest you review the 3 best systems on offer as a comparison?
I don't need to tell you which manufacturers they are ... or do I??
I can appreciate that you are trying to target a wider audience with the case choice but it's not necessarily the reading audience. Of the world this is probably a typical case choice but I couldn't say one way or the other whether it's a typical case for tomshardware readers.
Would have liked to have seen another case in there with better ventilation to see if there was a difference. After all the cooling fans are mounted in slightly different locations. Certain air flow patterns could be beneficial to either cooling system.