Best Value Air Cooler

[kalniel]

Maybe its just me , but if your going to spend £££ on i2500k why wouldnt you spend 20 - 30 quid more and protect it with decent cooling system like the H60 ?

Because you don't need to protect it. It's a very energy efficient chip and even overclocked you're only going to see max temperatures of around 45-50C in actual use* with the coolers being suggested. Bringing it down another couple of degrees isn't going to be any more protection, while water cooling brings it's own problems for other components.

*Probably lower - as stated the A50 cools my skt 1366 i7 950@3.7ghz more than adequately - max temperature I've seen in any game is 53C, even in very CPU heavy games. And Sandy Bridge is so much cooler.

[Noxvayl]

There is also the issue of allocation of resources. Some people just can't afford a top CPU AND top cooling for it. When I purchased my upgrade to Intel E6550/X38 I got the TRUE on a special offer for £25 but I never bought a proper fan for it until a few years later, I just used an old spare one, because I quite literally didn't have a spare £5 to spend.

So while I agree it's a good choice to get the best cooling for your machine it has the caveat of being the best you can afford. On another note the top of the range heatsinks like TRUE with push-pull, Noctua DH-12 or Akasa Venom Voodoo offer similar if not better performance in some high airflow cases to the all-in-one water cooling kits.

[kalniel]

Good point - if you've got the choice between going up a CPU model for £20 or going up a HSF model for £20, the former is going to give you much better performance for the money.

[melon]

There is also the issue of allocation of resources. Some people just can't afford a top CPU AND top cooling for it. When I purchased my upgrade to Intel E6550/X38 I got the TRUE on a special offer for £25 but I never bought a proper fan for it until a few years later, I just used an old spare one, because I quite literally didn't have a spare £5 to spend.

So while I agree it's a good choice to get the best cooling for your machine it has the caveat of being the best you can afford. On another note the top of the range heatsinks like TRUE with push-pull, Noctua DH-12 or Akasa Venom Voodoo offer similar if not better performance in some high airflow cases to the all-in-one water cooling kits.

Its a pity its not as good as I thought I see one going for 35.00 but if theres some risk with sealed fluid then no point, I was going to use it in my coolermaster Elite 330 Mid Tower Case.

This one sounds alright for the price , its supposedly one of the most quiet fans too from what I read.

m

[melon]

Interesting points. For quiteness an A70 will be better as the fans will be running slower at similar temperatures to the A50 so for £5 it gives a lot more overhead.

Don't know much about the rest but leaning away from the 212 now. Will take a look at that one in the post above. Any more opinions on it?

Guess it comes down to a couple of things for me. Looking for the best cooling performance for £20-30 (ideally nearer £20). Quietness would be a bonus. I know the SB chips run cool anyway but I still rather have to much cooling than not enough...

What about this one: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/arcti...m2-am2plus-am3

Any luck ?

What case are you using to house this ?

I dont think you mentioned it , but im looking at getting the Artic pro 13 ( i think ) same setup as you mentioned.

m

[Noxvayl]

I do like the Arctic Cooling products, have 3 myself. Good build quality and silent as well.

I definitely recommend the Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro, great value.

[melon]

I do like the Arctic Cooling products, have 3 myself. Good build quality and silent as well.

I definitely recommend the Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro, great value.

Yes, its sounds like a nice wee workhouse, now Im wondering whether cats talk of hard drive prices going up means i should try and get the cpu and motherboard asap , as I was hanging on to see if I could maybe get some special somewhere .

wishful thinking though i suppose.

melon

[Pob255]

Yes I've heard good things from the ACf13p, unlike the rather mediocre ACf13 which is little more than the ACf7p with a extra heatpipe and some bigger fins, so suffers in the same way (the fan has to ramp up to cope with a quad core when under heavy load)

@ExHail, what the 2nd little fan like for noise? I can see the benefits from having a secondary small fan on the base of the cooler to provide some air flow around the cpu socket, I'm just a little worried about the noise of it.

[Noxvayl]

@ExHail, what the 2nd little fan like for noise? I can see the benefits from having a secondary small fan on the base of the cooler to provide some air flow around the cpu socket, I'm just a little worried about the noise of it.

Not sure what you mean by that. Are you talking about putting an extra fan onto the ACF13P? Or are you talking about the one fan on the heatsink and "2nd" refers to my second recommendation.

Just to let you know the only CPU cooler I am currently using is the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, cooling a E6550 @ 3.2Ghz. I have used 2 other GPU heatsinks they make, Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev 2 and Accelero TWIN TURBO Pro.

I used their Turbo Modules on the S1 Rev 2 which were very quiet and the Twin Turbo is more silent while controlled by the graphics card. The ACF7P gets loud when temperatures ramp up above 60 but before that is a barely audible hum, the same as the case fans. That's all the sound related information I can offer personally, the rest would be from reviews.

[Tim_UK1]

rather than replace your existing cooler have you considered adding an extra fan to your case ? Depending on your case you might need to do some cutting but a well place fan (either in or out depending on existing config) might give a lot more benefit. If you air inside is warm and stagnant even the best cooler won;t help much. Also keep the heatsink blades clean of dust - this makes a hige difference.

[Plonk]

Never had any problems with the Freezer 7 Pro, definitely has to be one of the best value coolers of the bunch.

[t3chguy]

I have opted for the Cooler Master V6-GT and it is great, slightly on the loud side but not too far, and it is compatible with at least 6 sockets, I cannot find a single problem with it and it looks great, it lowere my CPU down by 18 degrees Centigrade from the stock AMD AM3 one...

[EvanJackPenn]

I was looking at the Tranquillo rev2, and found this quote:

The Rev. 2 Tranquillo is designed for silent enthusiasts who do not have a big budget and will not be overclocking their system.

That gives me a dillema - I'm not overly fussed on noise (I don't want a space shuttle, but I don't want 100C temps for 5dB of noise) and I will be overclocking.

General consensus says A70, despite no PWM. Would that suffice for a ~4.5GHz 2500k without sounding like a rocket? With no PWM, does that mean no fan control at all?

Thanks!

[dave4jc]

How about arctic cooler Freezer 13?

[Pob255]

Not sure what you mean by that. Are you talking about putting an extra fan onto the ACF13P? Or are you talking about the one fan on the heatsink and "2nd" refers to my second recommendation.

Just to let you know the only CPU cooler I am currently using is the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, cooling a E6550 @ 3.2Ghz.

Ahh sorry I thought you had the ACf13p, the 2nd fan I'm talking about is this one

The review that comes from http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1553/1/ doesn't go much into fan noise and most US reviews are more forgiving on fan noise then UK/EU reviews

I too had an ACf7p back when they first came out, great cooler for a dual core cpu, not so with the added heat of a quad core.
Side note the early ones where not so good when the PWM dies and results in the fan stuck at 100% all the time, which happened to mine, but that was a long time back and they fixed the fan issues long ago.

The ACf7p is also good in narrower cases where a 120mm fan based tower cooler will not fit. (many low cost mATX cases fall into this catagory)

How about arctic cooler Freezer 13?

It's a slight improvement over the ACf7p an extra heatpipe and some bigger fins.
For a dual core it'll be great, for an overclocked quad core the fan is going to have to speed up too high to cope with the load and it'll get noisy, not massively so and it depends on what you can live with.
The pro version add's the extra blower but more importantly moves the fan up from a 92mm to a 120mm which can put the same levels or airflow at a lower sound level.

[Sysadm]

A Coolermaster 212+ will do the overclocks you want just fine. I have my SB 2500k set to 4.7Ghz using 2 fans in a push-pull configuration. It hits 85 degrees when stressed out the the max but I would have thought 4.5Ghz would be more sensible.