Oh wait-cooling!

As you know, I took delivery of my MB, CPU, Power Supply [from here on referenced as PSU], and storage chip in my last update. From here, I was waiting to get some more major components so I could start piecing together the build. Shortly after plopping the CPU into the MB, however, I realized I may have forgotten something huge…

A CPU cooler!

I took the downtime whilst waiting for my components to start to research what kind of cooler I wanted to supplement my CPU with. A traditional heatsink with fan seemed to be the cheapest, most logical choice, and many CPUs even come standard with purchase. However, I liked the idea to be able to have liquid cooling down the line, that would be suitable for any kind of chip I wanted to upgrade to in the future. I also started realizing that although my NZXT H210i case came standard with built-in exhaust fans and RGB lighting, I did not have any intake fans to draw cool air into the case. 

Through my research, I found two suitable options for all-in-one [AIO] coolers that still kept me within my small form-factor for the future: The NZXT Kraken z63, and the Corsair iCue H100i RGB PRO XT. 

On one hand, the NZXT Kraken AIO featured an amazing pump LCD display, able to show anything from temperature figures, random GIFs, and of course any RGB lighting scheme I would want. On the other hand, it retailed at $250, bringing my overall build price much higher on just a single component. But because my case was also branded NZXT, it would work intuitively with their monitoring software and require very little tweaking once installed, which was a positive. 

The Corsair iCue H100i RGB PRO XT, however, retailed at only $119.99 at my time of purchase, and was Amazon Prime eligible for next-day delivery. I found that Corsair’s iCue software would also work extremely well with the RAM I had ordered [also Corsair] as far as RGB pairing [obviously important]. 

Both AIO’s had the same dual 120mm intake fan setup and 240ml radiator, and would fit into my case no problem. So as far as functionality for price, I was getting the same cooling regardless of which AIO I went with. For that reason, and because of pricing, I went with the Corsair H100i. Although some of the features for customization with the Kraken seemed amazing, I couldn’t justify dropping the change for it when I still had other peripherals [keyboard, mouse, monitor, AND A DESK] to buy. Plus Amazon Prime guaranteed I would take delivery of it around the same time I had some other major components coming [RAM, GPU, Case]. I ordered the cooler and awaited my other components.