Quote Originally Posted by JakFrost View Post
Absolutely you are right. I have thermal issues in this case even with the Xigmatek HDT-1284EE air cooler that I thought was supposed to be pretty good at lower price than the Thermalright True 120. This is also an awesme all aluminum Lian-Li V1200 Plus case that has a lot of great thermal management features. Check that thread I linked to above.

One thing that I have to try is setting the Asus BIOS Q-fan setting from Standard to Turbo to see if the motherboard will pump some more voltage to get the fan RPMs higher.

I am a very experienced computer user and admin but frankly overclocking has never been my forte since I do not want to invest in water cooling seeing as I am happy with how quiet my system is now on air. It is a big jump to move from air to water and to do it properly with good quality equipment.

I am going to try a little more to push this chip on air at least to 3.8 GHz but frankly I will not be truly diappointed if 3.6 GHz is the max for me.
I can just say one thing. Invest in a really really good cooler and call it a day if water cooling is not for you. for example a TRUE with high flow fans in push and pull. You can hook up the fans to a controller so that you can turn them down and enjoy from a quite PC. If you want to do some benches or what not, you can turn them up and enjoy a bit of benching. Can't go wrong with that.

Thing with i7's, even if you go water its not enough, there is never enough radiator to cool an i7. Check out the thread below its got a few pages, but go through it. Its my i7 watercooling thread . Its got pictures and info bout my watercooling setup. If you have any questions feel free to PM me bro

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=82607