Looking for heatsink recommendations

[Brainonska511]

Hi -

I have an Athlon II X4 635 with an Asus M4A785TD-M EVO (link to newegg pic) and the stock cooler from AMD. It's all AM3. It's all in a Cooler Master Centurion 541 mATX case - the one where it's a BTX styling where the expansion cards and PSU are at the top of the case.

I was looking at possibly changing out the stock cooler, since sometimes the fan can get kind of annoying.

My budget is ~$40 and I'd like to have a HSF where either the fan blows down on the motherboard (like the stock coolers) or blows out towards the rear of the case (fan blowing perpendicular to stock HSF bracket holders). I'd also like to avoid having to remove the motherboard or change out the HSF bracket. No overclocking is planned.

Thanks.

Edit:
Though, from the Asus PC Probe II I recently installed, the stock cooler does a pretty good job cooling. Sitting on Firefox + Skype + Winamp, the CPU sits at 33C (and was as high as 40C right after I came back from the screen saver or switch away from UT2004). I'm not sure if I would actually change out the HSF at this point, but I would like to understand more of what's available and good if I do go that route. I've only ever used stock coolers on the computers I've built.

Edit 5-22-2011:
Final update in this post: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=31706873&postcount=7

 

[Zap]

The Centurion 541 case is rather slim, so you would probably not be able to fit those big tower coolers that use 120mm+ fans. Here are a few that would probably fit.

TOP DOWN
Cooler Master GeminII S
Cooler Master Vortex Plus
Scythe Big Shuriken SCBSK-1000

TOWER STYLE
Cooler Master Hyper N 520
Xigmatek HDT-SD964

Just remember, the bigger the fan, the better the cooling (same RPM, more CFM). Alternately, the bigger the fan, the quieter the cooling (same CFM, lower RPM). The more heatpipes, the better cooling.

With that being said, pretty much any aftermarket HSF with a fan bigger than 80mm and 3+ heatpipes will be much better than the stock cooler.

 

[Brainonska511]

Thanks for the input. I might change out the stock cooler over the summer.

 

[Brainonska511]

At a curiosity, is one type (tower vs top down) considered better than the other?

 

[Zap]

The tower style usually gets lower temperatures for the CPU because it has a straight through unrestricted air path which usually follows the normal airflow in typical tower cases.

The top-down gives your chipset, VRMs and RAM some additional cooling which they do not get with a tower style cooler.

 

[Brainonska511]

The tower style usually gets lower temperatures for the CPU because it has a straight through unrestricted air path which usually follows the normal airflow in typical tower cases.

The top-down gives your chipset, VRMs and RAM some additional cooling which they do not get with a tower style cooler.

I figured it would be some sort of trade-off like that. Thanks.

 

[Brainonska511]

I went with the Hyper TX3 from CoolerMaster with a tube of Tuniq TX2. Damn, the fan is loud on this thing. I adjusted my QFan start temp from 25 to 35C, which has helped a little and keeps it at 1650RPM (initially, it was at 2200RPM and sounded like a small aircraft - full speed (2800RPM), WOW!). Coretemp says 24-27 just sitting on Firefox, which is about what it was with the stock HSF, maybe a degree or two less. It may have to do with my new QFan settings or it may have to do with my crappy thermal paste application.

The retention bracket is pretty crappy. The heatsink body almost interferes with the opening and closing of the clip, but I was able to get it to work.

I just ordered an Arctic Cooling AF9 PWM 92mm fan to replace the stock CoolerMaster fan. When that comes in, I'll probably remount the heatsink, as I think I might have used a little on the high side for thermal paste - first time I did it and it didn't come out the best (tried to at least spread it around with a CC). When I remount it, I'll just do the two line method and let the pressure spread the paste.

Edit:
As for height - it fits well in the Centurion 541 mATX case. Just had to remove the shroud and it was good to go.

Edit 5-22-2011:
I just changed out the stock fan for an Arctic Cooling F9 Pro and added an Arctic Cooling AF9 as a pull fan. It is so much quieter now. I ran Prime95, and it leveled off at about 40C. The fans, (the one I was monitoring was at 1500RPM), it was still quieter than the TX3 stock fan at idle.

PWM sharing works fabulously. The only issue I had might be motherboard specific, but for one fan, it cannot be monitored, even though it is hooked into the motherboard header. No biggie - it still spins via the PWM header.

 

[Brainonska511]

Scythe Big Shuriken SCBSK-1000

I did use this in my HTPC case upgrade. It fit really nicely and was easy to install. It's also very quiet - a big plus for me, since even the Athlon II X2 HSF coupled with a crappy case fan was loud.