air cooling for Q6600?

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Lord Twilight

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 1, 2001
Messages
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I'm contemplating getting a Q6600 on July 22 and I was planning on air cooling with a Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme in an Antec P182B and I'm wondering if that will be enough?

My room temps during summer in Arizona are probably going to be around 80° F or about 26° C. Basically, it gets hot. and the computer will be in the corner of my room under my desk, so air flow probably won't be great despite the P182 being a decent cooling case.

My current computer starts overheating if I start doing intensive things, but I'm sure it has much worse airflow than the Antec will.

Oh, and I don't want my computer to sound like an airport.. In fact, next to heat, sound is another dealbreaker for me :( My cheap aluminum case is too loud! Sucks that I could really use those extra core's for my freelance 3d and animation work.
 
The thermalright Ultra or Xtreme are the best coolers and also the quietest.

There is nothing better, so it's a no brainer. If you run you CPU @ stock or slightly overclocked, you won't have a problem.

If you have a fan controller, get any 120mm fan since you can lower its speed with it. If not, get one of those Yet-Loon fans that are very quiet and efficient!

Get it!
 
i can get to 3ghz on my q6600 with my zalman 9500. at 3ghz, my cpu idles around 43-45c and on 4 instances of prime95, it hits 64-65 with all 4 cores at 100%

i am on the verge of going watercooling.
 
man.. that seems pretty hot (relatively).. Maybe I should be considering watercooling for a Q6600 too.. Or I'll just get an E6420 and wait to see how hot Penryn's run.. they should be cooler, right?
 
My X3220 Quad will hit 70C when doing 8k FFT's in Prime95 running on all cores. On larger FFT's, it's in the high 50's, low 60's. I'm using a Thermaltake Ultra-120 Extreme with a S-Flex 64CFM fan. It's quiet and keeps the CPU cool enough for me. Sure 70C sounds hot, but big deal. I'm done water cooling and running loud as hell fans. If it blows up, so be it. I guarantee it will run for two years like this, and run for two more after that. I've never had a CPU fail, either here at at work that was made by Intel. The heatsink isn't hot and those are the actual core temperatures. On average, temps are much lower. Keep in mind, I've just hit 96 hours at 3.2ghz, 1.325 Vcore on this X3220 with Prime95 with worker threads running in blend mode. It's rock solid and the specs are in my sig. The Q6600 actually runs pretty cool at the stock speeds, but as you begin overclocking the temperatures rise quickly even if the volts do not.
 
I'm very happy with my Thermaltake Big Typhoon, at stock speed it idles at around 30 C.
 
I'm waiting like a lot of other people for the 22nd July price cuts to purchase a Q6600. I have 2X E6600's, one in a Antec 900 case and the other in a "no name" case. The E6600 in the Antec 900 has a Zalman 9700 HSF and the E6600 in the "no name" case has a independant WC' package including a Apoogee GT WB, a MCP350 WP and a MCR220 rad with 4X Yate Loon D12SM-12 120mm fans in a "suck" push/pull arangement. I live in a noisey enviorment (by the freeway) and as far as I can tell the noise from both rigs are about the same. I do know the water cooler runs about 3c or 4c cooler than the air cooler. I think whether you're Q6600 has a 105 watt stepping or a 95 watt stepping (G0) will decide whether WC'ing is appropriate or not.

Edit: to the individual with the x3220 (Xeon Q6600) is it true they run cooler or that they are just a higher bin of the Q6600's? I have read where Intel is keeping all the better E6600 cpu's to make Q6600 cpu's? Might the x3220 be made from the better E6600's? I'd like to give one of the x3210's a try. (Xeon Q6400)
 
Thanks for the responses, guys! It is helping reduce my fears of an overheating space-heater. If only I had somewhere else to put my computer than my bedroom, it wouldn't even be an issue..

I'll have to look into the G0 stepping I think. I know I've read that tankguys guarantee's G0 stepping so I'm going to have to go research what exactly the different steppings means.
 
jws2346 said:
IEdit: to the individual with the x3220 (Xeon Q6600) is it true they run cooler or that they are just a higher bin of the Q6600's? I have read where Intel is keeping all the better E6600 cpu's to make Q6600 cpu's? Might the x3220 be made from the better E6600's? I'd like to give one of the x3210's a try. (Xeon Q6400)
Click to expand...

I couldn't tell you since I don't have a Q6600 to compare with. What I can say is this CPU is running nicely at 3.2ghz, at fairly low volts. The temps are a bit high, but I upgrade so frequently that in a year I'll have something else. The best comment I can make is overclocking is not a science, it's luck of the draw. I've got good and poor overclocking chips in my 15 years of doing this, and temps do vary a bit from CPU to CPU.
 
unixadm said:
I couldn't tell you since I don't have a Q6600 to compare with. What I can say is this CPU is running nicely at 3.2ghz, at fairly low volts. The temps are a bit high, but I upgrade so frequently that in a year I'll have something else. The best comment I can make is overclocking is not a science, it's luck of the draw. I've got good and poor overclocking chips in my 15 years of doing this, and temps do vary a bit from CPU to CPU.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I can understand the thing about OC'ing being the "luck of the draw", etc, etc. I've read it many times on various forums, so it's probably true. What I was trying to get was a knowledgeable general consensus. I haven't been OC'ing chips for anything close to 15 years, but I've read on a several posts, from some people that say they've been OC'ing for 15 years, that Intel was holding back a lot of the better scaling and lower temperature E6600 cores to put them together and make Q6600's out of them. I've also read on several forums the Xeon server chips were especially chosen (positition on the silicon sheet)because they run cool on a lower voltage, a better conditition for a server chip as I thought most servers ran 24/7. Besides, as far as I know, there isn't a desktop quad core chip like the x3210 in a 6400 configuration.

OBTW, I've got 4x C2D's folding 24/7 ATM and I realize that the cpu chip temps do vary. I'm talking same series chip, same vcore, same clock (FSB), same cooling, etc The only two chips I have in that group are 2x E6600's and the core temps vary very little (more at idle) as measured by Core Temp, TAT, Speedfan, BIOS, etc.

Edit: Oops, I just reread my post and I lied about having two chips with the same cooling. I just ventured into WC'ing in advance to maybe getting a Q6600 come July 22nd or soon after. Both E6600's are OC'ed @ 3.0 GHz (333 FSB), both E6600's have the same vcore (stock 1.325), both E6600's are on TForce P965 mobos and both E6600's have 3 GB's of PC6400 (RAM seems to be cheap, I need another 1 GB)
 
Will the Thermaltake Ultra need to be lapped?

I heard good things about the ENZOTECH ULTRA-X. I am probably going with that.
 
galbilover said:
Will the Thermaltake Ultra need to be lapped?

I heard good things about the ENZOTECH ULTRA-X. I am probably going with that.
Click to expand...


The Enzotech is just incredibly good for oc'ing.Excellent manufacturing on it as well.The base is machined to finer tolerances then most I have seen at the high end.
 
I contemplated watercooling again. I already did that on one computer a couple years ago and watercooling has gotten much more mature.. I just don't really want to deal with it right now. Just want a nice quiet cool computer that I don't have to ever drain/clean (not that I ever had to drain or clean my old watercooled system). It's definitely fun and I really have to stop myself from getting back into it, but it's not really worth it for me right now, financially or time-wise.

Yah, it's not a lot more.. a couple hundred dollars for a waterblock, pump, rad and hoses, but I just need a nice reliable computer that I can do some freelance work and game on.

I do like to peruse the watercooling forums and go to DangerDen and FrozenCPU once in a while.. ;) *sigh*... now I'm going to go looking at watercooling stuff again.. :)
 
you still have to get rid of all the dust that collects in the heatsink if you aircool your cpu :)
the q6600 is pretty fast at stock speeds. if u really want fast speeds, why not consider getting a faster quad core processor?
 
aznmc16 said:
i can get to 3ghz on my q6600 with my zalman 9500. at 3ghz, my cpu idles around 43-45c and on 4 instances of prime95, it hits 64-65 with all 4 cores at 100%

i am on the verge of going watercooling.
Click to expand...

What are you currently using? Stock cooling?
 
galbilover said:
Will the Thermaltake Ultra need to be lapped?

I heard good things about the ENZOTECH ULTRA-X. I am probably going with that.
Click to expand...
That's Thermalright not Thermaltake.

Whatever happened to the Thermalright IFX-14? That's been on preview forever and the only review I know of was the [H] review which only pitted it against the the stock Intel cooler.
 
also using a cnps9500 and stable at 3 ghz, don't know the temps. Will probably switch over to the GeminII I picked up for $15, and add a couple case fans. $300 is a damn good price for this processor.

any1 want an e4300 for $100 it does 3 ghz no problem
 
Lord Twilight said:
Thanks for the responses, guys! It is helping reduce my fears of an overheating space-heater. If only I had somewhere else to put my computer than my bedroom, it wouldn't even be an issue..

I'll have to look into the G0 stepping I think. I know I've read that tankguys guarantee's G0 stepping so I'm going to have to go research what exactly the different steppings means.
Click to expand...

I just came across this (its taken from Tom;s Hardware:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus/browse_thread/thread/0f60975a162caf39/898307c86d5605d0?lnk=raot

Hope it helps. G0 has 11 degrees more headroom. I think we shud take that into consideration also.
 
UltimaR said:
Is noctua nh-u12f enough for q6600 @ 3ghz?
Click to expand...


I would say yes,but imagine it would also depend on the amount of voltage one is pumping throught the chip as well.We have a client at work that wants a Q6600
built up with a Noctua NH-U9F.And he plans on overclocking it as well.
 
I purchased a Q6600 two weeks ago. My AMD X2 was cooled using a Thermalright SI-128 and a yate loon. I figured I'd give my SI-128 a chance at tackling the Q6600. At stock speed under load the Q6600 would easily reach 68 degrees (Celsius, ambient 23+-2) with the SI-128. Out of curiosity I went ahead and installed the Intel Stock cooler to see what it would do. At stock speed the intel cooler gave load me temps of around 75 degrees

Now, if I overclocked my CPU to 3Ghz the voltage went up to about 1.37v the stock cooler would run at 85+ under load ( I did not let it run long at this.... closed it right away) the SI-128 managed 75-76 degrees.

Yesterday I received my Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120. The first thing I noticed is how bad the base was. It was curved like i had never seen before. On a flat surface the cooler could be rocked like a rocking chair. So I lapped it, then lapped the CPU for the fun of it.

Load temps at stock speed with a yate loon are now 52 degrees max. It's currently stress testing at 3Ghz and staying below 60 degrees. One thing I also tried was running a crazy 120mm fan on the Heatsink to lower temps... to my surprise load temps only dropped by 3 degrees.

All this to say that to me the Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme seems to be able to handle the Q6600 with a slight overclock.

(All load testing done with an instance of SP2004 assigned to each of the 4 cores. Temps read with TAT, Case is a Stacker EVO 830 no side fans - 1 in - 1 out )
 
Able to look at load temps now, and I'm at 57 C w/ my cnps9500, 3 ghz, and 1.32 Vs (this quad prime for 2 hrs) - I didn't even use fresh thermal compound so I'm surprised its running this well, I lose stability at 3.15 ghz but I believe that's because of my mobo/chipset a rev. 1 gigabyte S3 and my e4300 would error at 3.15 ghz as well.
 
The Enzotech Ultra-X is a great heatsink. I don't know what AnandTech was smoking that day for that review.

My E6600 is not oc'd but the temp on idle is 18-22 degrees and under load is around 30-35 degrees, obviously this also depends on the temp of my room, but my cpu has not yet broke the 40 degree mark.
 
Does anyone have a Q6600 and a Tuniq Tower? What kind of temps are you getting?
 
flashpoint603, those are interesting results, I have the CNPS 9700 NT and am debating if I could tame the beast enough to pull 3.0 out, but you have me thinking I just may be able to.
 
flashpoint603 said:
Q6600 @ 3.2ghz @ 1.375VCore cooled by Zalman 9700. Never see temps above 55c on 100% load
Click to expand...

are you running 4 instances of prime95 or orthos?

whats your room temperature?

those are some pretty impressive results on aircooling.
 
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