Best HSF currently available?

[The Sauce]

Have not seen a HSF round-up in a while now...what are people recommending these days. I hear that Alpha has a good one out, and that the AX-7 is supposed to be pretty good. Don't mention the Swiftech stuff...IMNSHO a HSF should not cost more than the CPU or mobo 🙂

 

[npc4]

Pretty much any of the ones near the top of the list in the last roundup should do well, provided you have a good fan and case ventilation.

I'm using an AX-7 with an 80mm Vantec Stealth fan. The HS was rather cheap (less than $40) and the fan, while not powerful, is quiet and moves 21CFM. My temperatures at the moment, idle, are 46C/35C for an Athlon XP1700. I'd expect that you might need a better fan for a hotter CPU.

 

[PliotronX]

For which socket? For 478, it would be the Swiftech MCX4000. I went against your anti-Swiftech sentiment intentionally because it is the best socket 478 HSF available. For a smidgen less performance but about $15 less is the Alpha PAL8942. Even less expensive is the ThermalRight AX-478 which is slightly less efficient with slower fans than the first two mentioned but depending on the budget, it may not matter. Those are about the only HSFs I would consider as a formidable upgrade over the stock Intel P4 HSF. If using an OEM P4 which doesn't come with the Intel HSF, I would take a look at the Taisol HSFs and the AVC Sunflower which all go for $10-20.

For socket 370/462 (socket A), the best would be the ThermalRight SLK-800. A cool "hack" for this one is that you can situate the fan clip so that you can fit a 92mm fan on their for better performance:noise than that of 80mm fans. It is made of solid copper and goes for around the price of the bare MCX4000. The ThermalRight AX-7 is about half the price, and performs very well compared with the SLK-800 using higher speed fans, but the 100% copper SLK-800 performs better by soaking up the heat more quickly than the AX-7 with slower fans. For all-out bang for the buck performance, the SVC GC68 performs very well with higher speed fans and costs just $6 (bare).

 

[Goi]

Not sure of the P4 side, but on the Socket A side, the Thermalright SLK-800 is unbeatable.