 A long while back I made this video looking into whether or not premium PC cooling fans were worth it. This raised another question, however, one that some people are actually rather uncomfortable discussing. Is aftermarket CPU cooling even worth it? I understand why this can be a difficult conversation. People often don't like their purchasing decisions coming to question, but in 2015 with much of the hardware development world going to less power draw and lower thermal output, but is it needed anymore? Let's find out. And stay tuned for our course for gaming update coming soon where we'll explore how many CPU cores are really needed for gaming in 2015. The Cooler Master Novatouch TKL utilizes exclusive hybrid capacitive switches powered by Topr and is now available at a more affordable price. Click now to learn more. Many a time in the history of PC builders, a young Jimmy or Jane has sat at the checkout window wondering if they should spring for a better CPU cooler at the cost of a weaker component elsewhere. Hours have been spent researching this question but to no avail. Whatever shall they do? If they're not interested in overclocking or aesthetics, the obvious answer is just to stick with a stock cooler and invest elsewhere. But if they want to overclock, is it worth it? How much is worth it? There are a lot of potential avenues to look at this from. One we won't be exploring is custom water cooling loops. They are too expensive, although there's some exceptions. They perform better, although there's some exceptions. You get the point. Essentially custom water cooling is an extreme variable because it's, well, custom. There's a metric ton of benefits to custom water cooling, but many of them come at the cost of, well, cost. At PAX East 2015, I did a top five gaming desktops at the Intel booth video. One of the systems shown in that video, the main gear one, had around a thousand dollars in just fittings alone. Now I know, not everyone's doing that. And if you are, you know what? That's freaking awesome. And if you're interested in that, that's great. Please post your build in the build log section of the forum because it's probably going to be beautiful and I'm probably going to want to see it. But this video may not really cater to you. I personally water cool, custom water cooling, but I spent about a quarter of that on my whole setup, including all the fittings and everything. And I expect most people that are newly getting into water cooling will be getting top-of-the-line processors anyway. So the whole is it worth it question is less likely applicable to them because improved water cooling is directly on their CPU performance upgrade path. Now, if someone is getting a processor that does have potential upgrades, now we're talking. We will be testing as a Cooler Master T4 in order to represent a fairly average example of a low to mid-range air cooler at about 30 ish dollars and a Cooler Master Sidon, which will represent the dual 120 millimeter rad and the similarly performing large dual air tower coolers like the Noctua NH-D15 at around a hundred ish dollars. Last and definitely least in terms of performance is the general run-of-the-mill, no-frills Intel stock cooler, which is bundled with your processor. The antagonist in the story will be the Intel 4690K, an extremely commonly recommended and purchased processor that will be testing these coolers at three different settings. One is the stock setting of a 3.5 gigahertz base frequency and a 3.9 gigahertz boost frequency. And next is a slight gigahertz overclock of all cores running at 4 gigahertz, but a pretty hefty voltage increase running at 1.25 volts. And lastly, it will run into another slightly higher frequency of 4.3 gigahertz and a heavier voltage increase of 1.35 volts. Please note that you could run these voltages and get much higher clock speeds. I was simply cranking up the voltage to turn up the heat. Next up, we have the CMT4. And before you comment down below that I'm a horrible human being because I didn't use the Hyper 212 Evo, I know. I'm sorry, we somehow don't have one in office. I honestly have no idea how Linus has gone this long without having one in stock. Yeah, anyways, it's slightly more expensive and will perform slightly better than the T4. And as you can see, the general message would have probably been somewhat similar overall. The 1.35 volt overclock resulting in a 95 degree processor and some throttling wasn't great, but this small upgrade allowed us to run at 1.25 volts at essentially the same temperatures as the stock cooler at stock speeds and voltages on the CPU. A solid improvement for just 28 bucks. Lastly, we have the Sidon 240. This cooler was able to achieve a very nice stock speed load temperature of 47 degrees and tied the stock cooler's stock clock thermal output, but at 1.35 volts, giving you a lot more room to play with. But the Sidon 240 has a really awkward price position when compared to a 4690K because a 4690K is $240 and a 4790K, which is hyper threaded and has a much higher boost clock of 4.4 GHz, is $340. Exactly $100 more. Very similar pricing to a Sidon 240. In conclusion, is it worth it? I'll give you a solid maybe. From the raw performance numbers, it looks like if you don't want to overclock, don't upgrade. If you want to overclock but don't have a ton of budget, get something like a Hyper 212 Evo. If you have a fair amount of budget, upgrade your processor. Or if you're already at the top of the line, just get whatever your budget allows. But that's not the whole story either, is it? Some people care a lot about aesthetics. I could call them shallow, but I do as well. Maybe I'm shallow? I don't know. And then there is some Silas Junkies as well. I know people that run custom water cooling setups for just their entire systems and don't even have an overclock. They just do it so they can turn their fans and their pump super low and run their computer at a whisper quiet level. What solution is best for you? For me, it's custom water cooling. I've had a bunch of my kit for a while, so upgrading doesn't really cost that much money. I really like the aesthetics, and it's just fun. Are you someone who's going to try to save a bunch of money and not buy an aftermarket cooler? Are you going to go for like the affordable, but kind of badass, get a little bit more out of your processor range? Or are you pretty much already up there and just want something cool and easy? Let me know in the comments down below. Or even if you're custom water cooling, which is super badass, comments down below, over on the forum. Either one totally works. Let me know. Also, down below this video, you'll be able to see a link for shirts that are definitely not a Twitch Plays Pokemon shirt, although Twitch Plays Pokemon was awesome. Ah, nostalgia. Anyways, over on the forum as well, there should be a support us link where you can change things like your Amazon affiliate links to our affiliate codes. So we get a small kickback whenever you buy things over there, which is actually super helpful. And there's tons of other ways to support Linus Media Group as well, like going on the forum or watching videos. Anyways, thanks for watching. I'll see you guys next time.