I just purchased an i7-875k, need a good cooler

M

mercid

n00b
Joined
Aug 17, 2008
Messages
16
Ive been looking here, as well as some of the other hardware sites that i enjoy reading, and it seems there really is no consensus on what the best HSF is these days. Does anyone here have some good recommendations? Ive only purchased 6 gigs of ram for this system for now, but plan on stepping up to 12 very shortly, so i would like to have all of the memory slots available for use on this motherboard.

Thanks for any advice!

Intel i7-875k
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R

EDIT: i pasted the wrong mobo in here: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4P
 
Last edited:
Most heat sinks will clear the memory if they don't have giant heat spreaders on them so I wouldn't be too worried about it unless you buy Dominators or Reapers or some other insane stick.

The H50/H70 and the CoolIT E.C.O. would be pretty good choices in order to provide the most room for memory heat spreaders. The H50 is the more popular of those from what I've seen as the H70 has just hit the market or is about to.
 
Ummm, isn't the i7-875K a LGA1156 CPU? And the X58A-UD3R is LGA1366... (EDIT: MissJ84 above beat me to it)

Anyway, as for the best coolers, you're right there's no general consensus. The Megahalems is up there, the Noctua D14 is a beast. Its 44mm clearance, so will fit most ram in all slots no worries, it'll fit up to anything about the size of ripjaws. Bigger than that you are gonna run into problems and would have to go a water cooler like the H70.

You can read different reviews and get different answers, it really just depends on how they're set up and how much power they need to dissipate, that's why its hard to get conclusive results. Most reviews test on an open test bench, but some coolers might perform better than the competition in a particular case with particular airflow. I remember one review had a C12P performing better than most tower coolers which is at odds with all other revies, but it may have been because they tested inside a case with an open side/mesh panel/side fan.

But you can't really go wrong with a Megahalems or Noctua D14. The H70 looks nice, but I haven't read a lot of reviews for it and the H50 didn't impress me (too many people complaining of poor performance at very high overclocks compared to high end air coolers).
 
Last edited:
Eew yeah,that's right. That's a 1366 board for the 900 series i7's.

As for a cooler, the Cooler Master Hyper 212+ is a very good one. The 120mm Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer is also good but big.
 
Oh shazbot.. thats what I get for glancing at the OP's specs. Haha.

Either way, you can't go wrong with any of the aforementioned kits.

I just got the NH-D14 installed and while its a beast of a heat sink, its actually smaller than I thought it would be. The front fan can also be moved up, if required. Then again, if its out of your price range, I would look into other options.
 
Bad copy paste on my part, from looking at so many things during research phase, and having a million windows open, sorry.

Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4P
 
All great choices with similar performance:
Prolimatech Megahalems
Thermalright Venomous X
Noctura NH-14D
Corsair H50/H70
Thermalright HR-02
 
I just bought an 875k myself. I did alot of web research and always found that the Noctua NH-D14 is the best performing cooler right now, but it loses out in the price/performance ratio and size. If those two cons don't matter for you, you found your winner!

I decided to go for it and bought the NH-D14.

Ð
 
Megahalems is a good choice, a bit cheaper than the other choices for higher end air cooling. I moved from an h50 and am a lot happier with this.
 
Spire Eclipse Thermax II with 2 fans that come included is quite good there is a review on frostytech about it.
 
Atara said:
Megahalems is a good choice, a bit cheaper than the other choices for higher end air cooling. I moved from an h50 and am a lot happier with this.
Click to expand...
I cant find Megahalems for AMD. it runs for Intel only.. So, I deicded to buy NH D14 for AM3, and happy with it.
 
After 3-4 hours of reading reviews I decided to get the Prolimatech Megahalems with 2 1600rpm fans in push\pull configuration to keep my I7 - 950 cool at 4+ gig. I wanted to get the NH D14 but I did not think I could clear my memory since my GSkill Ripjaws have tall heat spreaders. I currently have the Zalman 9900LED it is really bad under 100% load. Under normal gaming it works great but forget about stability testing.
 
and noone seems to mention the cogage options, lol. the true spirit and arrow are awesome performers for the price (though you may want to purchase extra fans for the arrow), they're basically unpolished versions of their thermalright counterparts and perform the same when prep.ed correctly.

the true spirit may require an appropriate thermalright bolt-through kit, but even if you need to get it you get a great package for ~$50.

if even higher performance is necessary the arrow (and thermalright silver arrow, which is just a dressed up version with flatter block stock) was found to be the new top performing air-cooler. with low-speed fans it's slightly beaten by the nh-d14, but utilizing the higher speed fans it pushes it aside taking the crown.
 
I had the Ultra 120 extreme with 2 2000rpm antec fans and had to switch out to a coolit eco. I am upgrading to the crosshair iv and 1090t and i would not be able to fit my ram in the correct slots. The coolit eco is definitely behind the true in terms of performance. about 2-3degrees at load.
 
Howard Stern said:
After 3-4 hours of reading reviews I decided to get the Prolimatech Megahalems with 2 1600rpm fans in push\pull configuration to keep my I7 - 950 cool at 4+ gig. I wanted to get the NH D14 but I did not think I could clear my memory since my GSkill Ripjaws have tall heat spreaders. I currently have the Zalman 9900LED it is really bad under 100% load. Under normal gaming it works great but forget about stability testing.
Click to expand...

http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=compatibility_ram_gen&products_id=34&lng=en

Ripjaws are fine with the D14.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top