SG05: Switching to an air CPU cooler

After seeing my CPU temps sitting at 70°C idle, I gave my SG05 a big old clean out just to find out there's a massive air bubble inside my H60. Anyways, I reseated it with some fresh TIM to get it in passable condition for the interim and got the temps down to 60°C. Since AIOs are a real cunt to deal with in a case this small, I thought getting an air cooler at a replacement would be the way to go this time. As you can prolly see in my sig, I'm currently sporting a ROG Impact with a couple of sticks of Corsair Vengeance Pro, so lots of daughterboards and high profile RAM, which does result in limited options.

I'm considering going with the NH-L9x65, but I'm trying to dig up a bit of info first, mainly on what the performance is like with the fan inverted/blowing away from the heatsink. Avoiding having the CPU fan and PSU fan fight against each other has always been preferential in this case, so if anyone can point me towards some data or a hands on experience, I'd appreciate it. Also, any suggestions to alternate coolers would also be helpful.

If you care about temps that much, you are probably better off going with a bigger air cooler like the BeQuiet Shadow Rock LP or a Scythe option.

I'm using the Noctua NH-L9x65 with i5-6500 inside the SG13. Temperatures are in the low 30s at the desktop with a few dozen browser tabs open and get up to 60 under all core load with software encoding on Handbrake but I have the fan blowing at the heatsink.

danger said:

If you care about temps that much, you are probably better off going with a bigger air cooler like the BeQuiet Shadow Rock LP or a Scythe option.

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The high profile ram prevents coolers like that from fitting, unfortunately.

777 said:

I'm using the Noctua NH-L9x65 with i5-6500 inside the SG13. Temperatures are in the low 30s at the desktop with a few dozen browser tabs open and get up to 60 under all core load with software encoding on Handbrake but I have the fan blowing at the heatsink.

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Cool, thanks for the info. Is your PSU orientated with the fan taking in air from the top or inside the case?

I have the PSU fan opening oriented on top as a necessity because it's a Corsair SF450 which keeps the fan off most of time.

Using the Silverstone SFX backplate there's a decent gap between the PSU and fan. I'm actually considering replacing the 14mm stock fan with a regular 25mm one.

My understanding is SG05 and SG13 are basically the same box so this information should be applicable in your case too.

Eh, I'm still sporting the ST45SF that came with my case with the fan constantly running, but it's not an issue for me. Have you considered inverting the fan? Found some info in this post on OCN.



Also, I found this article yesterday where they actually replace the stock fan with a NF-A9 PWM fan for testing. Used google translate, but it's easy enough to navigate. Basically, they perform roughly the same, but the NF-A9 PWM isn't as loud. So if you're going the silent PC route, it might be worth the pennies, otherwise hang on to your hard earned dosh.


I'm assuming that they just tested this in the standard top down setup.