OEM coolers--your opinion

[Ol Bob]

I purchase a gigabyte mobo last summer and picked up their 3d rocket cooler for use with it. It seems to work Ok, idle in the low 30's, and now I'm thinking of one of the Asus coolers for a P5Q board coming soon.Who's using these oem coolers, how do they compare with the aftermarket products like freezer 7 and ninja?Are they competitive in performance? Any horror stories?

 

[RallyMaster]

They are not OEM coolers. All of them are still considered aftermarket and while they seem to put a relatively large pricetag on their products, I don't believe their performance for noise level is as great as some of the more popular ones such as the Xigmatek HDT1283.

 

[Zepper]

It's like a lot of people will only buy stuff for their car with the mfr's name on it even though there is better in the aftermarket from 3rd parties at a similar or even lower price. Enough people are like that to make doing that profitable for the mobo makers even though few can stand up to the AC Freezer Pros or the OCZ Vendettas and plenty of others. The thing to keep in mind is that the mobo makers don't manufacture the HSFs - they have them made for them, so you have two levels of profit in there: one for the actual mfrs and one for the mobo makers. Thus at a given price point, it would be almost impossible for the HSF to be as high quality as the ones who control the mfr. of their products themselves.

.bh.