>>17263224I don't know why people say they're great for small form factors. I had to cram one of these things in a friend's Antec Three Hundred. I kept begging him to get a larger case, but no! I don't know how the hell I crammed it in there to be totally honest. I haven't really looked at cases in-depth as of late, but it was always a bastard to find one with a 120mm fan. Which is exactly what you need for the radiator. Every time I've tried to mount one of these things on a back 120mm fan the radiator hits the North-bridge or something else on the mobo.
Maybe I'm crazy, but large coolers such as the NH-D14 are not only ugly, but then you run into countless issues. Which include, and are mostly limited to: Blocking your RAM slots, can't use specific RAM as it is too tall, North bridge heat sink gets in the way so you can't use the cooler, on my old Gigabyte board it is a PAIN to plug in the power cable for the CPU around the giant cooler on it (Tuniq Tower 120 on a Gigabyte x48 board), on crammed mobos with low northbridges it can even go as far as almost skimming your damn GPU. Not even mentioning that the recent enclosed liquid cooling systems are easier than all hell to put on/remove. My old Tuniq Tower 120 actually made my partially take apart my case (Silverstone TJ07) to slide in the mobo tray on my last build.
I'll spend the little extra money to get rid of all the headaches that come with a giant CPU cooler. The H70 and Antec Kuhler H20 620 are better, at least reviews I read are, than the H50. Though when I got mine those weren't on the market, and I can't complain with 20C~ idle and 55c~ under full load temps. Seeing the Tuniq Tower 120 was not only the loudest thing in my last build, but my E8400 idled at around 40C and under full load could get up to about 80C.