Antec KUHLER HO 920 vs Thermalright Venomous-X

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JustinSane

2[H]4U
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Is the extra 30 bucks for the KUHLER worth it? Gonna be getting a 2600k and trying to hit 4.5 with it.
 
The Antec Kühler H2O 620 beat the 920 with a single high output fan. 920 NEEDS a push/pull. And it's one of the best there is.
 
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I think you should take the Kuhler,at least you don't have to worry about the clearance issues.Also you have a dual-fan solution.
 
I won a Kuhler 920 here, and I was really excited to use it instead of my "old technology" Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme. In the end, I wound up switching back to the Tuniq. The Kuhler 920 is good, but it isn't that much better than high end CPU coolers. Like Kyle stated in his review, "silent" mode is very quiet, but its performance is abysmal. Extreme cools well, but is very, very, very loud. I found a similar "low" setting, but temperatures were 5C higher than my Tuniq under load and it was slightly louder to boot.

I haven't seen this mentioned in any reviews, but I found that the 920 took a very long time to return to "idle" temps. This was the typical scenario for my setup after a gaming session: the CPU would be idle, but the coolant temp in the loop is still warm (say, 40C). The coolant temp drops a bit (35C), so the software backs off the fans. As a result, the coolant temp stops dropping and stabilizes at 33-34C. The coolant temp before loading the CPU for a prolonged period was 28-30C, so 33-34C in the loop isn't "true" idle. This problem could've been solved with a more aggressive fan profile in the software, but that would mean listening to loud fans long after you had finished loading the CPU.

Further food for thought:
[H]'s results for the Kuhler 920
[H] testing results for Venemous X and Tuniq Propeller

Note that's with the same motherboard, same CPU, same overclock, and same room temps (25C)*. The extra $30 of the Kuhler gets you 2C worse performance under load, while overclocked, with the "low" settings**. The only reason I'd suggest the Kuhler 920 is if you have clearance issues or had limited room in your case.

*So you'd think they'd be on the same chart. There's nothing wrong with being able to compare lots of heatsinks at once, instead of having to dig through old reviews.
**The setting that people are most likely to use.
 
Ozymandias said:
I won a Kuhler 920 here, and I was really excited to use it instead of my "old technology" Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme. In the end, I wound up switching back to the Tuniq. The Kuhler 920 is good, but it isn't that much better than high end CPU coolers. Like Kyle stated in his review, "silent" mode is very quiet, but its performance is abysmal. Extreme cools well, but is very, very, very loud. I found a similar "low" setting, but temperatures were 5C higher than my Tuniq under load and it was slightly louder to boot.

I haven't seen this mentioned in any reviews, but I found that the 920 took a very long time to return to "idle" temps. This was the typical scenario for my setup after a gaming session: the CPU would be idle, but the coolant temp in the loop is still warm (say, 40C). The coolant temp drops a bit (35C), so the software backs off the fans. As a result, the coolant temp stops dropping and stabilizes at 33-34C. The coolant temp before loading the CPU for a prolonged period was 28-30C, so 33-34C in the loop isn't "true" idle. This problem could've been solved with a more aggressive fan profile in the software, but that would mean listening to loud fans long after you had finished loading the CPU.

Further food for thought:
[H]'s results for the Kuhler 920
[H] testing results for Venemous X and Tuniq Propeller

Note that's with the same motherboard, same CPU, same overclock, and same room temps (25C)*. The extra $30 of the Kuhler gets you 2C worse performance under load, while overclocked, with the "low" settings**. The only reason I'd suggest the Kuhler 920 is if you have clearance issues or had limited room in your case.

*So you'd think they'd be on the same chart. There's nothing wrong with being able to compare lots of heatsinks at once, instead of having to dig through old reviews.
**The setting that people are most likely to use.
Click to expand...

Do you have any problems fitting your RAM in with your cooler? Not sure how much diff it is compared to the Venomous. I'm getting that same board and RAM.
 
I don't have any clearance issues with my RAM with my heatsink. There's about a 1 cm gap between the top of the closest heatspreader and the Tuniq and I have all four RAM slots filled. While it doesn't look like the Venomous itself will hang over the RAM slots, the fan might.
 
The 920 is definitely not a silent solution by any stretch of the imagination but with the same fans (GT AP29 ok very loud) push and a silent fan (Thermalright TY140) running in extreme mode I found it to beat any air cooler by quite a some margin (more of the order of 7-8C under load Vs. Megahalem with 2 AP15). If what you are looking for performance, you will notice a very large improvement with this kit. If you are looking for a quieter compromise, GT AP15 in push pull will still offer better performance than a heatsink but to a lesser degree.I was able to reach overclocks I wasn't able to before with the 920.
 
Ozymandias said:
I won a Kuhler 920 here, and I was really excited to use it instead of my "old technology" Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme. In the end, I wound up switching back to the Tuniq. The Kuhler 920 is good, but it isn't that much better than high end CPU coolers. Like Kyle stated in his review, "silent" mode is very quiet, but its performance is abysmal. Extreme cools well, but is very, very, very loud. I found a similar "low" setting, but temperatures were 5C higher than my Tuniq under load and it was slightly louder to boot.

I haven't seen this mentioned in any reviews, but I found that the 920 took a very long time to return to "idle" temps. This was the typical scenario for my setup after a gaming session: the CPU would be idle, but the coolant temp in the loop is still warm (say, 40C). The coolant temp drops a bit (35C), so the software backs off the fans. As a result, the coolant temp stops dropping and stabilizes at 33-34C. The coolant temp before loading the CPU for a prolonged period was 28-30C, so 33-34C in the loop isn't "true" idle. This problem could've been solved with a more aggressive fan profile in the software, but that would mean listening to loud fans long after you had finished loading the CPU.

Further food for thought:
[H]'s results for the Kuhler 920
[H] testing results for Venemous X and Tuniq Propeller

Note that's with the same motherboard, same CPU, same overclock, and same room temps (25C)*. The extra $30 of the Kuhler gets you 2C worse performance under load, while overclocked, with the "low" settings**. The only reason I'd suggest the Kuhler 920 is if you have clearance issues or had limited room in your case.

*So you'd think they'd be on the same chart. There's nothing wrong with being able to compare lots of heatsinks at once, instead of having to dig through old reviews.
**The setting that people are most likely to use.
Click to expand...

The Antec also used two higher speed fans than the Venemous in those reviews. I don't know about you guys but I never use stock fans. It would be nice [H] use the same fans in at least one section of their reviews like they did with the Venomous-X review. It made the Kuhler review useless to me.
 
JustinSane said:
Is the extra 30 bucks for the KUHLER worth it? Gonna be getting a 2600k and trying to hit 4.5 with it.
Click to expand...


I have a 2600K and hit 4.5 on my first try, 95prime 20hr stable. Corsair H60, peak temp was 71C on a hot day with a small case :)
http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-GRpvPVK/0/X3/i-GRpvPVK-X3.jpg

and I only paid $45 for the H60 :) And the H60 is pretty silent to me. I don't hear any pumping noise. 2 fan push/pull setup.

Since then I ran 4.6, but even with cooler ambients, it was at 74C peak. I may just settle for 4.5.
 
I got the Venomous-X and I just turned it on. BIOS is saying cpu temp is 42 degrees! Could that be ridiculously wrong? Haven't installed Windows yet thinking about taking it all apart again and redoing the paste. Damn it!

MSI P67-GD65
i7 2600K
Venomous-X
 
don't waste your time. install windows, get realtemp on there and see that your temps are probably closer 30 or less! trust me...i must've re-TIM'd 5 times before installing windows, and realized its the way the bios reads the temp.
 
ococ said:
don't waste your time. install windows, get realtemp on there and see that your temps are probably closer 30 or less! trust me...i must've re-TIM'd 5 times before installing windows, and realized its the way the bios reads the temp.
Click to expand...

Bless you. SpeedFan is reporting 30 degrees. And my pc booted to my old windows install like nothing happened LOL. Still reformatting just thought it was funny.
 
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