Best cooler for e8400?

[Hicks12]

As the title says, what is the best cooler (heatsink+fan) i can get, dont care about the noise as im used to it(case fans are loud). And any specific pastes?

Thanks

[staffsMike]

MX-2 or silver 5 for the paste.

Thermalright Extreme 120 or Ultima 90 plus a Scythe S-Flex 1600 or this
xigmatek

which works better on my mates thermalright extreme

Thermalrights
extreme120
ultima 90

[Hicks12]

wow didnt know standard heatsinks went that pricey xD. I will check tomorrow when i get time though. Personnaly was hopeing 20£ was suffcient but o well.

[starbuck]

Arctic Cooling freezer pro is under £20 and is still a great heatsink

[staffsMike]

Its good not great.

I personally use a freezer as above and a scythe ninja which is very good for the money. £27ish. If you just want basic cooling though the freezer is good.

Scythe mine at £23 is good value and the infinity around £30 as well. All come with fans.

[Hicks12]

the scythe andy one looks good and nice, certain to fit my e8400? and asus p5n-d i think it will as its a socket 775, just want to make sure. Any better ones though at similar price?

[staffsMike]

It will fit but thats not the best cooler. Top down coolers tend to warm up the chipset and that particular cooler hasn't had any fantastic reviews afaik.

If you're going to pay £28 get get ninja or the TR ultima90 + xigmatec fan it will be the best for the money.

[Hicks12]

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK
this one have a fan with it? i dont know because it says c/w 120mm fan.
And is there any better fans then the xigmatec?

edit: worth paying a little extra for this fan, Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK ?

[staffsMike]

The ninja does come with a fan yeah. It's quite good. The ninja is designed to run passive but with a slow fan it works very effectively.

The xigmatec does a very good job. There are faster louder fans but I'm not sure how much more of a gain you would get.

[JPreston]

Liquid nitrogen I should imagine

I don't have mine yet but (after testing temperautre with the stock cooler ) I will use an Ultima 90 as suggested above. If you want it to be cheap, it's only ~£5 more expensive than the Arctic Cooling and you are bound to have an spare 120mm or 92mm fan knocking about - since you don't care about noise that'll do the job for a while

[Hicks12]

so it does come with a standard fan? anychance you know what fan and the quality of this?.

Another question xD, my dad asked me to check if the heatsink(stock 1 for the e8400) would seat a 120mm fan just so i could save the money, any1 know?

Dont have any spare fans ,

also, might aswell sort out my case fans while im at it, 80mm is standard ones right? i think the side panel is a 90mm one, need to replace that one.
Recommendations on some cheap but good fast case fans 80mm and 90mm.

Thanks again.

[staffsMike]

No there is not much you can do with the stock cooler, it's naff.

The standard fan for the ninja is a 1200rpm Scythe fan with a sleeve bearing. It's very quiet and does a good job.

80mm fan wise. Sharkoon golf ball/ silent eagle 2000's are quite good.

[starbuck]

TBH, I don't know of many pieces of hardware(cpu's, graphics card etc) that come with a decent stock cooler. Best thing to do normally is get something without a fan and pay a couple of quid for a decent fan.

[JPreston]

so it does come with a standard fan? anychance you know what fan and the quality of this?.

Another question xD, my dad asked me to check if the heatsink(stock 1 for the e8400) would seat a 120mm fan just so i could save the money, any1 know?

Dont have any spare fans ,

also, might aswell sort out my case fans while im at it, 80mm is standard ones right? i think the side panel is a 90mm one, need to replace that one.
Recommendations on some cheap but good fast case fans 80mm and 90mm.

Thanks again.

No it doesn't come with a fan. You can buy cheap 120mm ones from about £3 though. The stock heatsink won't seat a new fan, but from what I read the Ultima 90 is well worth the ~£20 and if you are seriously counting pennies the Arctic Cooling is only ~£14 or something and is pretty good. And you may as well measure your case fan mounts to be sure of their size before ordering.

[Saracen]

.... You can buy cheap 120mm ones from about £3 though. .....

You can indeed .... but it may be false economy.

I tend to err on the cautious side with things that can cause extensive problems if they go wrong. With PCs, that mainly (IMHO) means power supplies and fans. It's often (IMHO) worth spending more for quality and in the case of fans, not that much more.

Hicks12, there's a number of characteristics of fans to keep in mind. The obvious ones are the speed, the air they shift and the noise they make. Less easy to quantify is the quality of the bearings. Cheap fans, all too often, are cheap for a reason. I've lost track of the number of PSUs I've come across that have been performing inconsistently, overheating, causing system crashes, and so on, entirely due to the use of cheap, sleeve-bearing fans. I've replaced these fans (and it's not a good idea to monkey about inside PSUs unless you know what you're doing) for the PSU to prove itself to be fine, and has then carried on giving good service for years afterwards.

Cheap bearings tend to dry out, start to seize up and, often, long before the fan stops turning or slows down visibly, it's slowed down enough to considerably affect cooling performance. Is that a chance worth taking on a CPU?

Your call, of course, HIcks12. But for me it's a no-brainer.

[TooNice]

Is the stock cooler really that bad? I remember a few years ago, AMD's stock cooler on their Opteron were actually *praised* by a few site (I think it was the first time use of heatpipes on stock coolers). By no mean were they meant to replace heavyweights, and they are not really an option for anyone looking for either extreme overclocking or a silent system, yet they were capable of enabling, say an Opteron 165 all the way to 2.6Ghz. That sort of overclock for the Opteron 165 is roughly equivalent to a Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz: there is a moderately good chance that a chip will reach that, but to exceed it demands a 'superior' chip irrespective of the cooling used (not every Q6600 will do 3.8-4.0Ghz, and similarly, not every 165 will do 2.8-3.0Ghz - though it has been done).

What I am saying is, if noise is not an issue, the stock heatsink can sometime push pretty far (it's hard to beat 'free' when it comes to bang for buck). Surely Intel's stock heatsink can't be that far behind.. can it?

That question aside (for my own interest), I'd probably suggest the Ultima-90. The Ninja probably would cool better at low airflow, but if noise is not an issue, and you go with say a 1600RPM fan, then you may as well go with a cooler that's better suited for faster fans.