Heatsink for Phenom II X4 955

[octopus41092]

What heat sink would work to passively cool the PII X4 955? Preferably something available from Newegg.

 

[error8]

In my opinion, passive on quads it's a fail. You still need good, if not, the best airflow possible in the case, to keep it cool on a passive heatsink. So, if your case fans would have to work on high rpm then it negates the whole passive idea. Any big heatsink, would work wonders with a pathetic 120mm fan, with 800-1000 rpm and you need to have bats ears to hear it working at such low rpm. Get the Megahalems heatsink and try it passive, but it's just wiser to strap a very low spinning fan on it. It will stay much cooler and totally silent anyway.

 

[faxon]

megahalems doesnt have an AMD mounting bracket. it's intel only at this point in time. a TRUE would be your next best alternative of course, and it does have an AMD mounting bracket.

ed: i run a megahalems on my Q9650 with push/pull low speed yates, and another low speed yate an inch from the pull fan exhausting out of my case, with the side door off. all in all, i cant hear the system when it's running with my headphones on at all, and i can only JUST hear it over my air filter with them off, with the graphics card being the most noticeable.

 

[RallyMaster]

Originally posted by: error8
In my opinion, passive on quads it's a fail. You still need good, if not, the best airflow possible in the case, to keep it cool on a passive heatsink. So, if your case fans would have to work on high rpm then it negates the whole passive idea. Any big heatsink, would work wonders with a pathetic 120mm fan, with 800-1000 rpm and you need to have bats ears to hear it working at such low rpm. Get the Megahalems heatsink and try it passive, but it's just wiser to strap a very low spinning fan on it. It will stay much cooler and totally silent anyway.

Agreed. Passive on quad doesn't work. Tried it already and my temps shot up to >80C at load. I have decent cooling as well.

 

[theAnimal]

What about IFX-14?

 

[WildW]

I put a lot of effort into passively cooling a 45W dualie recently, and that isn't completely possible in my opinion. The whole hot-air-rises thing they teach you when you're young isn't as fast and useful as you think. Low rpm fans at non-annoying sound frequencies for the win I think.

The quiet computer game is a dangerous one. At one point I got to the stage of "yes, I can still hear my computer, but it's not as loud as the blood wooshing round my head". I once lived somewhere so quiet that when I went to bed with my computer off all I could hear was the house creaking with temperature changes, and it sounded like monsters. My PC didn't get turned off at night after that.

 

[yh125d]

I run the C2D in my sig at 1.33vCore passively. Nearby fans are a rear 120mm exhaust (tri-cool on low) with about 3" space between the TRUE and the fan, and a top exhaust with 140mm fan thats turned off. It idles at ~32c and loads at 51/56c using prime95. I would be surprised if you couldn't passively run a quad, provided the quad was at stock vcore, with a proper cooler, in a half-decently ventilated case. My cpu has a 65w TDP versus 125w on the quad, so temps would definitely be higher. But considering I'm at .2v above stock, 40% OC, and temps are 15c below what I would consider "concerning", and 25c below what I would consider "problematic", I bet the quad could be run passively at stock speeds, if you're willing to live with load temps on the higher side of things. It could never hurt to try, just run it with a fan til you can get an OS/temp monitor installed. Load it under p95 or the stress tester of your choice, and remove the fan and watch the temps. If they don't get too high for you to live with, you're G2G


For reference I did approximately the same with the same proc at a similar OC with my old Xigmatek S1283, it handled passive just as well. With a heatsink more designed to be ran without a fan than those two, I imagine it would fare even better

Although It would be best to have a really slow and quiet fan on the CPU, think 800rpm, you won't hear it