E8500 @ 3.8ghz w/stock HSF & volt. Doable?

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Freezebyte

2[H]4U
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Sep 21, 2008
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Hey all, im about to order my parts tonight for my SFF build and i'm torn between just taking a light OC with my setup and saving $50 on not buying an aftermarket HSF. I'm pairing it to a Asus P5E-VM HDMI board with G.Skill 4gig DDR2800 RAM fed by Antec NeoHE 500w.

I"m wonder, you think I i'd be able to bump the FSB to 400mhz and leave the vcore stock and get decent temps with a stock Intel HSF if I clean it and put on a nice layer of AS5?

My aftermarket cooler choice is the Zalman 8700 as it seems to work well in SFF setups, but its an ouchy $53 that I dunno if I can justify. I"d rather not increase the VCore at all on the E8500 to keeps temps down.
 
having no experience with that Zalman I can not say. But in reading your post a couple of things caught my interest.

Unless you were thinking about getting an OEM cpu you are going to have the Intel heatsink anyway so why not see what it will do. If your goals are not acheivable replacing the heatsink, while annoying and killing an afternoon if you have to take out the motherboard, is not all that big of a deal.

If it where me I would lap the IHS and see what it would do with the stock heatsink and with a copy of coretemp and orthos you could pretty quickly find out what the deal is going to be and order the other heatsink if needed. I assume a $30 Artric Freezer will not fit ? . I would also be prepated to give the cpu at least one bump in voltage, use of EIST/speedstep and C1E to drop the mulitplier under light loads will help a lot. Also critical will be case airflow so get the biggest fans the case will accept.

Keep in mind many of us are very conservative with temps and I have no idea what kind of cpu load your typical applications will create but that cpu is rated for a 100C Tjmax and so you can run it at 99C 24x7 and it is still withing Intel specs. I am not saying running it that hot is the thing to do but if you can have the machine do what you want it to do with a peak temp of say 85C, while you will not earn any bragging rights, it should not have any long term determental effects. Also keep in mind the stock heatsink if allowed to auto speed adjust will run hot as most EIST/Speedstep temp profiles favor higher operating temps over noise meaning the fan runs as slow as possbile while still keeping the cpu in the thermal envelope so what most here would consider high temps ( greater than 60 - 70CC ) is normal under load. Which takes me back to good case airflow to get that heat out of the case for long life of all the electronics. Anyway just some random thoughts while my movie loads.
 
I seriously doubt you'd be able to hit 3.8GHz on stock volts, but you could give it a shot anyway. I'd say 3.4-3.6GHz would be a more realistic goal (and in practice you probably won't notice a bit of difference between that and 3.8GHz anyway).
 
I'll agree that 3.8 is not something you should be figuring on with stock voltage.

You need to either plan for lower clock speeds or higher voltage. And if you're sticking with Intel HSF, you should probably go the lower clock speed route. Especially in that silverstone case, due to the CPU being in a really odd place. Their optional HSF is probably the best bet for that case, not only is it a nice aftermarket cooler, it solves 2 problems with one piece of hardware, since you don't end up with fans pulling in both directions (CPU HSF pushing air down vs. PSU fan pushing up and out).
 
I would also highly doubt that you could get to 3.8 on stock cooling or voltage. Would something like an Ultima 90 fit?
 
eBay my friend, eBay. I just got an 8700 NS (the silver expensive one) for $30 shipped.
 
First off-- get a decent cooler.. Temp is one thing i dont mess around with and never liked or trusted the intel fan that comes with the chip... I have a zalman 9500 and though it wont fit for your application--- it runs great and keeps good temps and is very quiet..Plus the post above just showed where to get a 8700 for 30bucks..

2nd-- While i dont think youll get 3.8@ stock V-- i dont think youll have to bump da juice much to get there.... My temps on my 8400 didnt rise much at all till i went from 3.8-4.2--- that took some juice and my temps did come up some there.. But right now i run 4.15 24/7@ about 40c idle and mid 60s load... Those temps are low enough for me to not worry at all...
 
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