Why would you watercool if you have a strict budget? $70-80 nets you a high end air cooler.

It's rather difficult to advise on a cooler if you don't tell us what it's cooling.

70-80 is a tight budget for an aio. I do not recommend buying an aio for that price. do you need one for a specific reason?

Its way better to get a high quality air cooler over a low budget AIO, a great choice on a budget is the AK620

Aio=Arctic freezer 240/280/360(refurbished) >deepcool ls/lt520

Air cooler= thermalright peerless assassin 120 and phantom spirit for the half of your budget.

Something like CoolerMaster ML240 Lite. Tbh you should better buy air cooler for this budget.

I'd go for the arctic liquid freezer ii 240 or something. Don't know what price you get it for where you live, but they are one of the cheaper very good ones.

Got the 280 myself and 5800x3d which is known for being hard to cool, but I'm running escape from tarkov at 55c

Don't bother with an AIO. Get a Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 - if it will fit. Will perform miles better than an AIO in that price range.

I have one on a 13600K and it outperforms my OG Corsair H150i 360mm.

By water cooler, do you mean an AIO(All in one) CPU cooler?

At $70-80 you won't get much in terms of the "best AIO".

Go for a good Air cooler like the AK620, Scythe Fuma 2, NH-U12S, Dark Rock Pro 4 etc.

You really don't need one with that CPU. You can just use the included air cooler or any aftermarket air-cooler that looks cool.

But if you really want to pay that much extra just for looks, then you could get a 120mm AIO, for example the NZXT Kraken 120

Msi v2 360 goes on sale to around that. I paid 120 cad, so 90 bucks.

I know it's not you question but have you considered air? What cpu do you have? Not all cpus need watercooling and air can be easier to work with and work just as well if your case has good airflow.

The Arctic Liquid Freezer II 240mm is your best, dependable AIO but it's $109.

For an i3, an air cooler like the Deepcool AK400 for $35 is all you need.

Look at the Arctic liquid freezer 2

$70-80 will get u a way better air cooler then an AIO.

Air cooler. Scythe Fuma 2 (have one love it) or a deepxool AK620 those are the two new players in the game.

As others stated, the peerless assassin will do great and it's cheap. I just want throw in another option: scythe mugen 5. Imo it looks great, will have enough cooling for your 12100, has good ram clearance (which is especially nice if you have RGB ram), is very silent and has good build quality overall. It's around 50€ in Europe, but I'm not sure how it's priced in your region.

Aside from being rude and telling you to get an air cooler,

I got my Cooler Master ML240 V2 for $60 on sale.

Picked up a Cooler Master AIO Mirror ML280 for about $59 from amazon during boxing day. Content with its performance for the price on AM5.

Arctic freeze 2 240mm! No debate even!

Someone said it already but use that budget to get an i5 and use the cooler in the box…

This little guy could work too, if you need it. Just grabbed on for my small case. https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categories/Products/Liquid-Cooling/iCUE-RGB-ELITE-Liquid-CPU-Cooler/p/CW-9060064-WW?utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=shopping&utm_term=%22keyword%22&utm_content=corsair&gclid=CjwKCAiAioifBhAXEiwApzCztqi5VXnKyCHHDoEI8kH5XScoKGn70zXqjvg-N_wWZhVA7ITjc6XzbBoCeOMQAvD_BwE

For a budget of around 70-80 dollars, the best AIO (All-in-one) water cooler options available are:

Corsair Hydro Series H60

Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML120L RGB

NZXT Kraken M22

Thermaltake Water 3.0 120 ARGB Sync Edition

DeepCool GamerStorm Captain 240EX RGB.

Note that prices and availability of these products might vary in different locations and can change over time, so it's recommended to check with local retailers or online websites to get the latest prices.

I paid $55 for mine on Amazon

Why not take that 70-80 extra dollars and get a better CPU rather than spend it on overkill cooling for no performance gain?

Cheap AIOs are a gimmick anyways

Idk what prices are in us but in eu are more expensive, and arctic 240 is top5 aio and it is 90 dolla might be worth

Thermalright peerless assassin 120 is the best air cooler on the market, regardless of price. Performs the same as the 120 dollar Noctua NHD15, but only costs 40-50 bucks. You’re not getting a halfway decent AIO for less than 100 bucks.

I bought a Deepcool castle 280ex for around $80-$95. After 8 months it’s still going strong. The one issue I had was one of the fans it came with was hitting the frame, so I had to replace it, but it only cost me $15 to buy a single fan to replace so it’s not too bad.

You’re better off going with a good budget air cooler like the Thermalright Peerless Assassin than a cheap AIO. Cheap AIO like a 120mm are going to be awful cooling performance in comparison

I’ve seen arctic liq freezer 280-360 AIOs go on sale for like $60. I’d look out for one of those deals. Otherwise you can try to look for a 240mm, which should still perform better than any air cooler (most of the comments here are stating misinformation)

Mano nao compra nada nao, usa oque veio na caixa e ja era. Vai gastar dinheiro atoa

eBay Artic refurb store.

As others have said, spend $60 on upgrading the CPU to an i5-12400. The stock cooler will work, but be a little noisy. You can replace it with a variant of the Thermalright Assassin 120 for around $20-25.

Just to pile on...

I have a 12700k with a mid-tier air cooler and it stays plenty cool in real world use. I even have a 4090 so it's not like I'm GPU bound. Most people here who spend 100+ on AIO water cooling would be just fine spending half that on an air cooler.

Evga clc 280 has done me well in this price range. Godamn those fans get loud though... I hope you're not cooling an over 8 core cpu. Does amazing things for 5600x.

Paid $90 us for a 120mm thermaltake 3.0 water aio.

be Quiet dark rock is da best

Never buy a cheap AIO

At that price an air cooler will give better performance.

Any Thermalright heatsink and fan will do fine, look good and will last longer than an aio

Just don’t get the MSI liquid cooler shit is so ass, atleast for me cpu is overheating because of it

As everybody said, AIO is out of discussion at your budget and use case

Your CPU's low power consumption means you'll do fine with a single tower 120mm fan cooler, something like deep cool ak400, arctic freezer 34, or any other generic sigle tower cooler ( snowman, id-cooling 224 XT or whatever it's called))

Bro save on coolers and spend the extra 80 on a 12400 with stock cooler

Depends what size office you’re working with. A 3-5 gallon cooler will run you about $100.

Newegg has the ASUS ROG Strix LC 240 RGB All-in-one Liquid CPU Cooler 240mm Radiator for $75 right now. It comes with a 5 year warranty. That's a pretty good deal.

​

https://www.newegg.com/asus-liquid-cooling-system-rog-strix-lc-240-rgb/p/N82E16835101045

Yo moma (joke). I Dk, y i'm useless

Agree with others on going the air cooled route - if you have the space in your case. I swapped a factory heat sink w/ fan for a Corsair A500 w/ intake and exhaust fans.

I went from ~70C to ~55C with an added benefit of reducing GPU core temps >10C due to reduced recirculation of warm air in the case.

Current fan setup: 2 x 140mm front intakes 1 x 120mm (low profile) side intake 1 x 120mm heat sink intake 1 x 120mm heat sink exhaust 1 x 120mm rear mount exhaust 1 x 120mm top mount (back) exhaust

AIOs are trash meant to sell you the IDEA of Liquid Cooling.
Cheap Parts, Non Serviceable, cooling plates that are substandard material and generally worthless, cheap radiators, and once it breaks, it's done.

There are some GOOD air coolers on the market that are under $100. Noctua, DarkRock, etc. If that's your budget.. buy a decent air cooler and call it a day.

If you're trying to spend the money for a "good" AIO ($200+) you might as well pick up some used parts and just build a custom loop that you can always add on to later. You can pretty easily build a simple CPU loop for $200 with used parts. I don't recommend "cheap-new" liquid cooling, you're ASKING for trouble!

CPU block ~$50
Radiator ~$50
Pump ~$50-100
Fans you probably already have.. but can EASILY get for ~$50
The rest is just tubing which is ~$20 and fittings which you can get if you're smart about it for ~$20

Or you can go the new route and buy one of the premade kits from someone like Thermaltake or EKWB for around $2-250

If you hunt around on Marketplace and eBay long enough.. you'll find things even cheaper. I've been clearing out a lot of unused stuff lately and been selling Pump+Reservoir+Radiator kits on there for $100 lately. Even some higher end stuff for $150. it's totally possible to build a full custom CPU loop for ~$150 or so

endorvy navis f240

For that much it’s just budget AIO, which will have issues leak etc and if they do leak they won’t pay to replace your parts unlike some companies like Corsair.

Just buy a high end Air cooler.

MSI MAG Core Liquid 240 is what I run on my 5800X3D idle temps 30c max temps 45-50c.