Sandy Bridge Chills Aftermarket Cooling

[Patrick Wolf]

More good news about SB. It can overclock like crazy and maintain low temps with modest cooling solutions.

Article

You read that correctly. This little $26 heatsink used three skinny heat-pipe rods and an Intel push-pin mounting system to tame an overclocked 5.2 GHz CPU (2600K) to 68°C. It didn't require a ProlimaTech Megahalems or Thermalright Venomous-X, and even our beloved Scythe Mugen-2 would have been wasted on this effort. I think you get my point: it was the lowest possible denominator on the aftermarket cooling scale, and most impressive overclock could be done without all of the extra heat-pipes and copper fins. It's also why there may now be an entire industry poised to collapse as a direct result.

And yes, 1156 coolers are fully compatible with 1155 boards. Anand confirmed. Some boards will even support 775 coolers.

 

[RussianSensation]

Thanks for the link Patrick! Looks like heat won't be a problem for 4-core SB. It's important to note the 5.2ghz overclock was achieved at 1.504V. So the temps would be even lower under a more realistic 1.35V 24/7 overclock.

 

[Soccerman06]

Only problem is the voltage... maybe SB can handle higher than normal voltages, but 1.5v would burn through a 860 pretty fast. From what we've seen with the current SB revision, 4.8ghz seems to be where voltage requirements spike.

 

[phillyman36]

I'm not going for a high overclock but i still wound up buying a Thermalright Archon.

 

[rolodomo]

Doesn't this open up a budget "silencing" aftter-market? Just take the fan off those coolers mentioned in the article and they'll probably get the job done for
SB.

 

[Nintendesert]

Do current LGA 1156 coolers support the new LGA 1155 boards? How would I find out? I'd still prefer to get a semi-decent aftermarket cooler for my SB builds. I've never been a fan of the CPU coolers shipped with chips if any overclocking is going to be done.

 

[SmCaudata]

I think I read that the 1156 brackets will fit 1155 boards. Some companies will be putting 775 mounting bracket holes.

 

[ilkhan]

I bought a zerotherm ZT-10D and a couple noctua fans (7v them). Should keep a 2500K shivering and silent both.

 

[stahlhart]

Thanks very much for posting this. I had been considering the Megahalems for the upcoming SB build, but now perhaps I can dial this back a bit.

Mabye the Cases & Cooling forum here would also be interested in this article?

 

[StinkyPinky]

Sounds very promising. I think I may just get another Arctic 7 Freezer Pro for this. Cheap and doesn't need any extra work to mount.

 

[CosmicMight]

I agree with everyone else, nice find Patrick. Guess my A70 will be overkill, but that will make me a little less nervous about the overclock (my first!) I'm going to throw on it.

Can't wait...couple more days. /drool

 

[cbn]

More good news about SB. It can overclock like crazy and maintain low temps with modest cooling solutions.

Article



Also, many people are wondering if 1156 coolers are compatible with 1155 boards. Haven't seen solid confirmation of this yet. But seeing as the HSF used in the article was for 1156, it's safe to say yes. I also read someone asking Thermalright about it, they also said yes.

Amazing. Maybe the IPC isn't increasing that much but the Thermal performance sure is.

P.S. I wonder how many watts these pull when OC'd?

 

[Patrick Wolf]

I certainly wasn't expecting this, thinking I'd need some heavy, gaudy hunk of metal clinging to my board. Those may still be great for lowering temps even further, but also cost more, take up space, and put more stress on the board. I expect to see more passive solutions crop up as well.

Looking forward to xbitlabs thorough testing, which I'm sure they'll do. Though now I'm very curious about Ivy Bridge and 6-8 cores on 22nm... hopefully this trend continues.

 

[cbn]

I certainly wasn't expecting this, thinking I'd need some heavy, gaudy hunk of metal clinging to my board. Those may still be great for lowering temps even further, but also cost more, take up space, and put more stress on the board. I expect to see more passive solutions crop up as well.

Not only that, but I'll bet the SB laptop parts clock nicely (as a result of the improved thermal performance).

EDIT: It will be interesting to see how OC'd Sandy Bridge quad cores play with Mini-ITX as well.

 

[jimhsu]

I think I read that the 1156 brackets will fit 1155 boards. Some companies will be putting 775 mounting bracket holes.

Already mounted a cooler (Hyper 212+) on a 1155 motherboard (unfortunately no CPU yet), and the bracket fits fine. The mounting holes for all 1155 motherboards are in identical positions to 1156 boards.

Perhaps Sandy might bring about an era of totally silent, passively cooled, OVERCLOCKED performance machines. Plus the decent integrated graphics that makes low-end discrete solutions obsolete. That would be something.

 

[stahlhart]

Could there eventually be a spinoff of this technological change to GPUs, where we eventually revert back to quieter, single-slot cards?

 

[Rifter]

Could there eventually be a spinoff of this technological change to GPUs, where we eventually revert back to quieter, single-slot cards?

I dont think this is going to happen , they have to keep pushing the performance up to keep people buying/upgrading. I cant see GPU performance flatlining it long enough for passive quiet cooling technology to catch up. If you want it to take less space and be quiet the go with water cooling.

 

[SZLiao214]

I have the bigger brother version the 212+ which seems to be more then enough for this cpu. No new mounting system needed

 

[Zap]

Also, many people are wondering if 1156 coolers are compatible with 1155 boards. Haven't seen solid confirmation of this yet.

Anand says they are compatible in his Sandy Bridge CPU review. You know, at that little known site called AnandTech?

Seriously sometimes I think that most of the people here don't even realize that AnandTech is a content site, not just a forum.

 

[Castiel]

Looking forward to seeing how far i can go with a H70

 

[tomoyo]

Anand says they are compatible in his Sandy Bridge CPU review. You know, at that little known site called AnandTech?

Seriously sometimes I think that most of the people here don't even realize that AnandTech is a content site, not just a forum.

That's so funny to me, I massively look forward to reading the major anandtech articles over almost any other site. Anand just has such a higher bar of excellence on major technical events.

Also while sandy bridge runs cool, I'd assume overclocking combined with turbo modes will definitely be helped by having a good cooler. Running stock, most coolers would probably be fine. I look forward to getting around 17-18 dba in my next system using sandy bridge or bull dozer

 

[Patrick Wolf]

Anand says they are compatible in his Sandy Bridge CPU review. You know, at that little known site called AnandTech?

Seriously sometimes I think that most of the people here don't even realize that AnandTech is a content site, not just a forum.

This thread was created before the article went up. I'll update the OP though.

 

[SickBeast]

There will still be a need for aftermarket cooling. People will still want to keep their CPU as cool as possible. I'm sure you can still eek a few hundred more mhz out of a SB with good cooling.

 

[smakme7757]

Having a look at the Guru3d review; @ 4300Mhz the cores are pushing 70c. There is also a review at overclockers.com where the cores went as high as 76c.

Both tests were done using the stock cooler so the chip runs cooler as i doubt a current i7 would do 4300Mhz on stock cooling, but in any event an after market cooler/Water Cooling would make me feel safer in pushing the chip to such high frequencies.

 

[Castiel]

Having a look at the Guru3d review; @ 4300Mhz the cores are pushing 70c. There is also a review at overclockers.com where the cores went as high as 76c.

Both tests were done using the stock cooler so the chip runs cooler as i doubt a current i7 would do 4300Mhz on stock cooling, but in any event an after market cooler/Water Cooling would make me feel safer in pushing the chip to such high frequencies.

I ran a 920 C0 to 4Ghz using the stock cooler. It idle'd at 60c but it still performed