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478 Heatsink fan for OCing?

Well, I've been boastfully posting my choices all around the threads on this site -- which would opine my answer to your question.

A friend swears by the Zalman CNPS-7000 -- a 775-gram hunk of copper in the shape of a flower with a proprietary fan. He also says "heat-pipes don't work -- heat-pipes are hype . . gravity fails them . . . " but I went with heat-pipe-heat-sink designs, and my temperatures dropped below his. Then I swapped my all-copper heatpipe HSF for an Al-Cu combination by ThermalRight -- an XP120 with a large SUNON fan that throws about 108 CFM through the fins. My friend has been fuming in his e-mails lately, furiously vowing to buy larger case-fans, but sticking to his Zalman copper-job.

Now . . . I'm happy with the XP120 and SUNON 120x38mm combo -- at a price of about $57 -- the XP120 was about $48 and the Sunon was $9. But I'm going to try a YS Tech 120x38mm fan (about $14) that pushes something like 125 CFM at a noise level that is only 3 dB above the SUNON (42dB, blow-hole side-panel with Akasa Pax-Mate), which is quiet as a sleeping kitty. Well, you hear the rush of air -- it sounds like "Hushhhh!"

Wrong time of year to test the temperature limits, but so far, at room ambient 73F, an idle CPU value of 80F and a load value of 95F.

I would say there are four or five heat-pipe Heat-sinks you can buy for use with a fan purchased separately, and which would be better-than-adequate. But I've been diddling with these things all summer, and the XP120 with these and a few other fans is very impressive.

I've OC'd my system -- just for benchmarking -- from stock 3.0C to 3.808 with idle temp of 85F and load of 99F, but backed it off to 3.6 so I could set the voltages back and get "temperature-equivalent" to the 3.0 stock value.
 
ThermalRight makes equivalent models that accomodate different motherboards and AMD systems. So does ThermalTake, CoolerMaster and several others, but . . . . you have my opinion.

[ and . . . . I don't own stock in these companies!! 🙂 ]
 
If you look at the Zalman get the Al-Cu unit as it is lighter and no much worse then the all Cu one. the core is still copper just aluminum fins.... I think these can be had for under 40 and likley picked up used in the for sale forum for low 30's....
 
No argument there.

I made conservative choices in planning this system:

(originally 2.4C @ 3.0) now 3.0 @ 3.6 and rock-stable at 3.8 (Vcore @ 1.55V, VDIMM reference @ 2.85V and AGP VDDQ @ 1.6V up from 1.5)
P4P800 standard
OCZ dual-channel EL "Gold" DDR500 (not revision 2) -- 2.5, 4, 4, 7 (stock) @ 2.5, 4, 4, 6
Hitachi 7K250's in on-board RAID-0
Sony DRU710A
Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS

. . . no deluxe mobo . . . Northwood P4 and not the fastest . . . no WD 740 Raptor SATA150's . . .

Started sheet-metal work on the old Gateway 1995 full-tower "not-quite-ATX" case back in December, '03.

So . . . I'm probably not going to worry about an extra $10 or $20 -- or even $30 for the heatsink and fan.

Lucky to find the XP120 for $48, tho'. Some resellers are "offering" it for prices in the $60+ range.

But it's just me. Cooling is a priority. We let the room-temp get up to 78F here in summer before flipping on the AC . . . post-Enron electric bills -- you know the story . . .
 
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