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Best CPU HSF? Money and noise not a Concern

Muscles

Muscles

Senior member
Getting ready to buy an X2 3800+. I haven't decided on mb yet. Either Asrock or DFI Ultra-d for $50 more. What is the best CPU HSF you can buy when money and noise is not a concern? I want whatever will cool the cpu the best. I've been told the new Zalman CNPS9500 is the best by a local buddy but I wanted to confirm first online.
 
If you want air...try an XP-120 and strap a 200cfm Delta fan to it. Otherwise, the Thermaltake Big Typhoon or Zalman CNPS9500 are good choices. 🙂
 
Im thinking about this too, money is of no concern for me (want to stay air though). But cooling and quietness are top of my list. I want a big typhoon but mine is on back order and dont want a xp120 as everyone has one of those. Gots to fit an 939 abit an8 too.
 
Wow the Big Typhoon looks pretty good but couldn't it be a lot better if you took off the fan that comes with it and replaced it with a much faster one like the 200cfm Delta Bona Fide suggested?
 
Originally posted by: Muscles
Wow the Big Typhoon looks pretty good but couldn't it be a lot better if you took off the fan that comes with it and replaced it with a much faster one like the 200cfm Delta Bona Fide suggested?
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Becareful with the size of the Typhoon. It's the size of 2 Human fist stack on top of each other. Not that heavy though for its size is. With the bolt in method, It's not an actual problem. Just the surrounding components on the board pose a problem.

You like Deltas eh? You must be talking about this Delta. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: mindwreck
yeah if moneys not a concern, just go all out and get cascade or watercooling.
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Can't go water or phase or anything like that since I'll be using this rig to travel with a lot to lan parties.
 
Bona Fide:
Muscles:

I know only second-hand about water-cooling. When I started with building my "MOJO" in early 2004, I committed to air-cooling with heatpipes.

I was able to test something like six different heatsinks, some with heatpipes, and some fifteen or twenty fans of assorted sizes. I only stayed away from DELTA because they make powerful fan motors, and all the forum geeks who spoke of them joked about "the noise." But the bearings are good, and at RPMs commensurate with mid-range Panaflo fans, they aren't any noisier.

Another thing I found out was this. All heatsinks and heatpipes -- even water-cooling blocks under maximum flow conditions (assuming that water is not "chilled" but at room temperature) -- have a minimum thermal resistance. While I didn't tabulate my results with high-throughput fans, there is a CFM threshold beyond which thermal resistance remains the same.

Today, based on a contention about "what makes a cooler a 'good' or 'best' cooler," I tuned down my Delta Tri-blade 120x38mm fan mounted on my XP-120 cooler. Before today, I had it running at around 2,500 rpm, allowing it to spin up close to 3,500 rpm when a temperature had been reached on the way to full CPU load conditiions.

I tuned down the idle end of that speed range to about 1,500 rpm. Idle temperature didn't change, although you would think it would rise a bit. Perhaps that says something about heatpipes in general, or the ThermalRight coolers in specific -- I'm not sure. But it also turns out that pushing anything above 110 or 115 CFM doesn't reduce the load temperature any further, and I think even lower CFM than 110 would hold the load temperature at what it was under 130 or 140 CFM.

So a 200 CFM fan doesn't help beyond some level far below 200 CFM.

HOWEVER -- what high throughput fans do, despite a limit on their effect on the heatpipe CPU cooler, is to further cool the motherboard, chipset heatsink and memory modules. But even those temperatures did not change when I tuned the idle fan speed down to 1,500 rpm.

The more powerful fans have heavier motors, and one would want a lighter fan just as one would want a lighter heatpipe cooler. On the other hand, there is probably something to be said for overkill: if the motor was designed to push that much air, it probably has a greater longevity at half the speed than the 50K or 100K hours specified for the fan.
 
All you need is an XP-90/120 equipped with a reasonable fan... presto.. some of the best cooling available, for not so much $
 
well truth be told alot of people are not aware of the Scythe brand!!

But I just installed a Xp120 and after the break in from using AS5 I will be doing a comparison between the xp120 and the zalman which according to UPS will arrive at the house monday!!

Yeah- sometimes ya just have to give credit where credit is due and Scythe has a real fine product!
 
Scythe Ninja:

Artfully designed, consumes space but does so with some strategic advantage. May allow for two low-speed 120mm fans to draw air through two adjacent sides of the cooler.

Shows a thermal resistance of 0.18 C/W with a 120mm fan pushing about 42 CFM. This is moderately low throughput. It would be interesting to see what happens when you double the CFM on the fan.

Somewhat heavier than the XP-120, but you don't have to hang a fan on it if you can mount one on the case nearby, while the ThermalRight's weight will increase by as much as 250 grams or as little as 190 grams with the addition of a fan.
 
Originally posted by: Muscles
Can't go water or phase or anything like that since I'll be using this rig to travel with a lot to lan parties.
Click to expand...

Gaming? Are you sure you want an x2 CPU? There's a thread in CPUs/Overclocking where people mention having occasional problems in games while using the x2 CPU. That, and games don't really benefit from dual core yet. Get a cheaper CPU with higher MHz and you'll have better gaming performance than the slower MHz dual core. Also, stuff will run cooler. Use the money you save on a better video card or SLI. For gaming SLI will probably help more than dual core.

Speaking of cooler, for LAN party usage consider lightweight and low profile, meaning no huge hunk of copper and no big tower design. Might I suggest (depending on fit) the Zalman 7700AlCu, Thermalright XP-120/SI-120/XP-90 (not "c"). All those are lightweight and have top-notch performance.
 
Originally posted by: CraigRT
All you need is an XP-90/120 equipped with a reasonable fan... presto.. some of the best cooling available, for not so much $
Click to expand...


:thumbsup: XP-120 with a 120mm Panaflo
 
In lieu of the AMD X2's, my friend in Albuquerque says the socket-939 Venice 3000+ is immensely over-clockable in a DFI LanParty SLI mobo. You can swap it out for an X2 later on.

He says he's running a 1GB kit (2x512) of OCZ Gold VX DDR500's. And he noted that he had to set a 5:6 divider on the over-clock, just to keep the memory DOWN to its full spec. It's set up with ThermalTake Bigwater water-cooling, but I think you'd get nearly the same temperature profile with the ThermalRight SI-120 and a 120x38mm Panaflo.
 
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