[Saturn2004]

hey guys... i got a question..
what brand\type of LGA775(Socket-T)  CPU cooler would  be best for my new  comp that i am bulding?

 Thanks for your help in advance:D

[IPAndrews]

Everyone used to go mad over those Thermalright SLK coolers back in the day.

[Grey Wolf]

Zalmans are nice (quiet too), as are Thermalright (not as quiet). Swiftech used to have a real good reputation, but they've fallen behind by a bit.

[CP5670]

The Thermalright XP-90 (the aluminum, LGA775 one) and either of the two Zalman 7700s are still your best options once the prices are factored in.

[deep_eyes]

thermalake is good too.... look it up on pricewatch.com

[Grey Wolf]

I've heard poor things about Thermaltake. As for Zalmans, anyone hear about the new CNPS9500? Looks nice:

[Fury]

Anyways... I have never seen the need for more expensive CPU coolers. In my experience the retail boxed coolers are good enough, I had to buy better case fans though since the ones that came with the case were too noisy, but AMD64 boxed retail cpu fan does not bother me one bit. But apparently the original poster is going for intel system, which I can't help but to shrug at.

[CP5670]

Those 9500s aren't out yet though as far as I know.

[Grey Wolf]

No, they (the 9500s) aren't. I was going a bit off topic.

As for the LGA 775 vs. 939, 939 has the technical advantage, but 775 has the marketing.

Finally, retail vs. after-market coolers: The retail ones are just barely good enough for the processors they accompany. Any thoughts of overclocking, pairing with high-end video cards, or running in enviroments without air conditioning should be accompanied by thoughts of upgrading your heatsink.

[ChronoReverse]

Unless you own an Athlon64 3000+.  I take mine from 1.8GHz to 2.4GHz on the stock cooling and voltages.

[Flaser]

Another *quite* important aspect:

NOISE

Getting a big, fat fan will make hardware assembly harder and the whole PC heavier - though it will be  immeasurably quiter.

[Grey Wolf]

Originally posted by ChronoReverse
Unless you own an Athlon64 3000+.  I take mine from 1.8GHz to 2.4GHz on the stock cooling and voltages.

It may, but you'll be paying for that with the life of the processor. Personally, I've been leaning towards undervolting recently.

[ChronoReverse]

Excuse me?  I'm running stock voltages.  The cpu idles at 1-3 degrees above room temperature.  I'm not crying about losing a fews days of my CPU's expected life-span.


And not all stock heatsink/fans are inadequate.  For example, the Leadtek 6800LE actually uses the same copper heatsink as the one for the LEadtek 6800GT.

[phatosealpha]

Well, in pure performance terms I expect the new thermalright si-120s to top dog or very close, plus a 120mm is gonna be a lot quieter then stock.  They claim to have solved the compatibility problems the old XP-120 had too, which is always good news.

I thought about the Zalmans, but the sheer mass of the things made them look like they'd be a right royal ***** to install, let alone uninstall.  Plus, the toss more mass at it approach just seemed inelegant.  From what I hear, they're the quietest, but don't have quite the performance of the thermalrights.

As for noise, I didn't realize just how annoying the stock AMD coolers sound when they ramp up until I replaced it with an XP-90 and a panaflo.

And yeah, A64's overclock nice even on stock.  For a while there it wasn't uncommon for 3200+ venices to hit 2.7Ghz on stock, but it's apparently gone downhill a bit.  Still, having the option of running it nice and cool while still being quiet even while gaming or tossing some more voltage at it to see if you can get it even higher isn't a bad thing to have, nah?


Of course, that's kinda a moot point for the original poster.  If cooling an A64 is like blowing on your soup to cool it off, cooling a P4 is trying the same thing with lava.

[ChronoReverse]

si-120 will fix the compatibility issues?  Hmm, I might look into that.  I'll probably get a XP-90 when a sale pops up though.

And I like your last comment enough to put it into my sig.

[CP5670]

As for the LGA 775 vs. 939, 939 has the technical advantage, but 775 has the marketing.

Well, the sockets aren't that important; it's the CPUs that fit on them that count.

And not all stock heatsink/fans are inadequate. For example, the Leadtek 6800LE actually uses the same copper heatsink as the one for the LEadtek 6800GT.

That isn't the same heatsink. It's a half height version, sort of like what the stock 6800 GT cooler is to the 6800 ultra one. It's still better than the stock one though.

Well, in pure performance terms I expect the new thermalright si-120s to top dog or very close, plus a 120mm is gonna be a lot quieter then stock. They claim to have solved the compatibility problems the old XP-120 had too, which is always good news.

It's good if they fixed the compatibility problems, since that was the main drawback of the XP-120. The SI-120 seems to have a lot less surface area than the XP-120 from the picture on their website though. I guess it still should be quite good given that the XP-120 with a powerful fan rivals many watercooling setups.

My motherboard supports the XP-120 but the XP-90 it was a good $15 cheaper when I bought it and even it has turned out to be overkill for my crappy engineering sample processor that can barely overclock at all, even with a hefty voltage increase. At least I can hang on to the heatsink for another upgrade, since the X2s would make better use of it.