best LGA775 air cooler?

S

StRiFeXD

Weaksauce
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Oct 21, 2006
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I'm currently running an E8400 overclocked to 3.8ghz on 1.30V using a zalman 9700 and temps are reaching around 70C under load in bad company 2 =\

I'm wondering what air heatsink you recommend to get this thing as cool as possible. Also, does this mean that I will have to remove the entire mobo to replace the bracket under it for the new heatsink?

Thanks
 
70C under load is not at all that bad, chip does not start throttling until 100 C (Per Intel presentation at IDF 2008). I am assuming your are reporting a core temp from Realtemp/Coretemp/Speedfan/whatever and not a thermistor reading from the board. Careful there is a Tc (case temp where case is the heat spreader of the cpu) that is shown on Intel's site and is around 70C. Many people thing that the Tc value is the max core temp. This is not so. Long story. Short story is 100C core temp is your chips max before it thinks it is hot and 10C or so (Intel has never told us exactly) above that it will shutdown to save itself. So have 30C of thermal headroom before your chip even regards itself as "hot". Will cooling it more hurt, hell no. Will cooling it more help with OC, maybe a little.

So your case airflow and the Zalman seem to be doing pretty good. That is a pretty decent heatsink. Large, multi-heat pipes, large fan, high quality construction.

I think you would have to go with a TRUE or Megahalem (Sp?) and maybe even add a second fan for push pull to significantly reduce your temps. The air cooling guys will likely add more to that short list. I am mostly a watercooling guy so be sure and get other opinions. The CM is a good value in a tower heatsink and many have had good results, but I am concerned if it would be a sufficient improvement over what you have. No way to tell for sure unfortunately.

Frankly I would be more worried about my video card temps. 70C while running that game on an very respectable OC should not be causing you any issues now or in the future, should run forever at that temp and voltage.

Consider the Corsair H50 or similar as well. There is a review here and many posts regarding it. It did not review well but users tend to have reported much better results. Just a thought /another option.
 
Noctua NH-D14 hands down.

I have run probably 10-15 different heatsinks on my Q9550 trying to get the most of it and the NH-D14 made the biggest difference. I have not personally tried a megahalem but most review sites show the D14 ahead, and it comes WITH fantastic fans. They have great bearings and are very very quiet.

I have run Xigamtek's offerings, TRUE (lapped) w. scythe 3krpm's, Core contact cooler lapped, etc.. and none came even close.

Before the NH-D14 I could not even hit 3.95, let alone 4.0 or 4.1 (without being silly hot). With the Noctua I can now run my q9550 @ 4.1ghz 24/7 and even under load I get better temps then my buddies i7 920 @ 4.0 with the new Thermalright Venomous-X (TRUE killer).

If the NH-D14 is too big for you or you like to pick your own fans, then I would go with the Venomous-X as it performs very close with a smaller footprint and may cost slightly less to greatly more depending on what you pick for fans.

70c load isn't too bad, but considering that's only under BC2 load I would think your Prime95/OCCT/Orthos temps must be very close to threshold, I know at least for me BC2 does not even come close to the temps I see with those.
 
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Thanks for the input =) and thanks BillParrish on the info about the Tc temp. I've been hearing about the 70c max from random places, so that had me worried, but it's good to hear that the zalmann is actually doing a decent job. And yes, I am checking my temps w/ the latest version of RealTemp. Perhaps I will redirect my $$ towards a new Q9550 :D
 
There's a handful of good coolers that perform well depending on the situation (depending on what fans you use, what your case layout and airflow is like, what your clock speed is like, etc). The Megahalems, Venomous-X, Noctua D14 (or a little bit cheaper the Noctua U12P), Xigmatek's Thor's Hammer, Zalman CNPS10X, several Scythe coolers and a few others that aren't coming to mind straight away. They are all good coolers. There isn't any shortage of reviews for you to check with a quick google search.

If you want to go a bit cheaper, I think the Xigmatek S1283 and S1284s are pretty good given how cheap you can get them.

When I was running an E6600 it was getting up to 65-70 degrees on hot days, and the stock intel cooler was stupidly loud and annoying, so I went for a Noctua U12P. Made the computer almost silent and dropped the temperatures from the 60s down to the 40s.
 
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