KitGuru Annual Awards 2013

You have done your research and chosen your processor. As a KitGuru reader, you will have largely ignored the benchmark results at ‘stock speed' and looked straight at the nice, large numbers when the processor has been overclocked.

All well and good, but overclocking takes juice and juice manifests heat and heat is the enemy.

You are eyeing the high voltages, but now is the time to pause for a second and consider how you're going to keep your beloved new CPU cool.

At the high-end, we will be looking at liquid cooling solutions, but – for enthusiasts among you – let's consider what CPU cooling bargains there may be in the sub-£40 zone.

Arctic has had a relatively quiet year (although the Freezer Xtreme Rev 2 we saw in September 2010 still does very well in our testing) and we're beginning to see rumblings in the west from companies like Deep Cool with the Lucifer cooler.

But, for now, the main competition at this price point was between Cooler Master's aggressively priced Seidon 120M liquid cooling solution and the Phanteks PH-TC12DX.

Going head-to-head on cooling with an Intel Core i5 processor clocked to 4.6GHz, the results from the Phanteks air cooler and Cooler Master liquid unit are identical.

Where the Phanteks unit wins is on acoustics. In KitGuru Labs testing, it was over 4dBA quieter than the Cooler Master Seidon 120M and that is a significant number.

Read our review, over here.

KitGuru's award for budget CPU cooling solution of the year goes to the Phanteks PH-TC12DX.

Buy from Overclockers UK, from this link.

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