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Twenty Five Intel CPU Coolers Tested

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the unseasonably-warm-this-year dept.

Kez writes "Over recent years coolers have grown increasingly exotic in design, striving for good cooling performance and low noise even with the most power hungry of CPUs. But sometimes that comes at a price, be it straining the motherboard's socket to its limit, or the wallets of PC enthusiasts. Investigating which coolers do their job well without snapping your motherboard in two, HEXUS.net reviews 25 LGA775 coolers."

20 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. I have found... by mulvane · · Score: 5, Funny

    That the most effective (and costly), is sticking my wife on my processor. Her icy cold personality towards my computers has allowed me to reach near 0 Kelvin on many over clocked processor lines.

  2. wow what a spammy site by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful


    i have seen less adverts on a domain squatters site, running a website must be really expensive if you have to be that desperate to plaster the page with 20+ adverts per page (from multiple advert servers) and as a result create a page that is over 400kb of tracking/advert scripts and images when the actual content you read is about 1kb

    i guess dignity has no place on that site, or this one for that matter for linking to such a pathetic excuse for a website

  3. Aftermarket coolers are useless for most users. by Spazntwich · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When was the last time a CPU failed at stock speed with the stock cooler?

    The obsession with aftermarket cooling solutions for all but the harder core overclockers strikes me as about as ridiculous as engine oil companies' claims of their oil increasing engine life over other oils. When was the last time you heard about an engine seizing that didn't straight-up run out of oil or suffer from a factory error?

    1. Re:Aftermarket coolers are useless for most users. by 427_ci_505 · · Score: 2, Informative

      I'm pretty sure they're using the same amount of power, but just getting rid of wasted heat better. I might be wrong. Does a cooler chip need less power to do a certain action than the same chip running warm?

    2. Re:Aftermarket coolers are useless for most users. by Netsplitter · · Score: 3, Informative

      A lot more people are aiming to have silent computers nowadays. While the cooling capabilities may suffice, they are very loud. Personally, I can't understand how anyone can be in the same room with the sound of a stock cooler, let alone try to sleep in the same room with one.

    3. Re:Aftermarket coolers are useless for most users. by ben+there... · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you look at the prices for Core 2 Duos, the difference between something like the E6600 and the X6800 is $750. Slap a $50 cooler on the E6600, clock it up to 3.2 GHz easily (~3.6 GHz max on air) and you have a CPU that performs better than one that would have cost you $700 more. You'd have to be kinda crazy not to overclock the Core 2 Duos.

      You're right that most users don't, but they should. It's a worthy investment.

    4. Re:Aftermarket coolers are useless for most users. by Kamokazi · · Score: 2, Informative

      You're somewhat right.

      But that article is not targeted at most users. It's targeted at geeks like us, who want either:

      a) A quiter PC
      b) A PC that will last longer because their components ran cooler
      c) People who stress their CPUs a lot and want to ensure they are not going to die prematurely (gamers and powerusers).
      d) Overclockers

      Also, why are datacenters and server rooms often air conditioned to well below room temperature? Longer life, true, but also better stability. See how long you can run Prime95 on your PC without an error. Eventually you will get one, and if you had the time to do some thorough testing, you would see a trend...the hotter your components, the sooner you would get an error.

      Something worth noting is major PC manufacturers rarely use stock cooling. The usually have ducted systems for CPU cooling.

      (Oh, nice job on including the obligatory slashdot car reference. While you probably would never see a difference between Penzoil, Valvoline, and Quaker State, you would eventually see a difference between those and bottom shelf crap oil.)

      --
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    5. Re:Aftermarket coolers are useless for most users. by raw-sewage · · Score: 2, Informative

      When was the last time a CPU failed at stock speed with the stock cooler? The obsession with aftermarket cooling solutions for all but the harder core overclockers strikes me as about as ridiculous as engine oil companies' claims of their oil increasing engine life over other oils. When was the last time you heard about an engine seizing that didn't straight-up run out of oil or suffer from a factory error?

      True, but some people (such as myself) have a different/additional obsession: silent computing. Stock heatsink/fan combos usually do an adequate cooling job, but don't necessarily do it quietly. With an efficient heatsink, you can often run the fan more slowly (or not at all with a low-power CPU) and drastically reduce the amount of noise coming from you PC.

  4. Ad revenu by RpiMatty · · Score: 3

    Exec 1: So how do we fit 1 million ads into a review?
    Exec 2: 25 products with 4 pages each?
    Exec 1: BRILLIANT!

  5. The Zalman CNPS series is nice by bcmm · · Score: 2, Informative

    I have a CNPS7700-AlCu. It's a cheaper one than the one they review - and also smaller. The piece of metal with the vanes sits straight on the CPU with no heat pipes or anything. What they don't mention is that even my smaller cooler is technically out-of-spec - they're heavier than a LGA775 cooler should be, but motherboards don't actually snap that easily.

    Anyway, the cooler comes with a device for adjusting it's speed, and it is practically silent on the lowest setting while still providing pretty good cooling. It helps that my processor isn't a very hot one (Intel Core 2 Duo 6300), but even on the silent setting I cannot make it go over 49 C. In fact, the vanes have enough surface area that if it's a cold day, the cooler works fine disconnected, i.e. without the fan turning.

    As they say, fitting it can be a pain, but that is presumably the price you pay for fitting some 700g of copper on the motherboard.

    By the way, it's worth taking measurements or checking their list of supported motherboards - it's physical dimensions are beyond the LGA775 spec as well. It extends out over the components immediately surrounding the CPU, and on my motherboard it neatly blows air through the northbridge and GPU heatsinks.

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  6. Something weird with their testing methodology by A+Friendly+Troll · · Score: 3, Informative

    Some really, really great coolers, like the Noctua U12 or the Ultra 120 Extreme, don't fare very well on their test.

    Also, if you haven't noticed, there's no word about fan noise... Which is extremely important to a lot of people. What good is a couple of degrees difference between cooler A and cooler B, if the latter includes a 4000 fan that sounds like a jet engine while the former is inaudible in a closed case?

    Look elsewhere if you want to read proper articles about the subject.

    1. Re:Something weird with their testing methodology by cheesecake23 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Also, if you haven't noticed, there's no word about fan noise... Which is extremely important to a lot of people. What good is a couple of degrees difference between cooler A and cooler B, if the latter includes a 4000 fan that sounds like a jet engine while the former is inaudible in a closed case? I posted a comment to that effect on their forum. A staff member replied:

      Had the guys done noise, something else would have had to drop. Luckily they found the time to rate the packaging the coolers came in.
  7. You might be a loser if...... by LibertineR · · Score: 5, Funny
    1. You use water cooling on your computer, and have friends with whom you regularly compare operating temps.

    2. You rearrainge your workspace to see the built-in temperature guage no matter where you are.

    3. You have a variable speed control for the fan on your power supply, and adjust it based on weather conditions.

    4. You believe that the fan on top of your workstation blowing out actually does anything worthy of the added cost.

    5. Your workspace sounds like a 747 on approach because of all the fans in your workstation.

    Nobody ever got laid over their ability to keep their computer cool. Cool is out, QUIET is in, bitches.

  8. Online "magazines" are going nuts by syylk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ok, all nice and cute... ...But ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN pages to describe CPU coolers?

    I mean, WTF? Next time, just put one word per page, alongside 29763410974 banners/links/ads and be done with it. This kind of... err... "journalism" is spiraling down. Quickly.

    I know I will miss some incredibly useful piece of vital information by avoiding to read all 119 pages. But I also know there are more creative ways to offend my own intelligence.

  9. Page 115 by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The graph for CPU temp under load - my question is, if you're an aftermarket cooler maker, and you can't even beat the Intel stock cooler, why exactly did you go to market?

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
    1. Re:Page 115 by Mr+EdgEy · · Score: 2, Informative

      Some people buy OEM to save cash, and a cheap cooler helps them with that

  10. Noise by joeflies · · Score: 2, Informative

    One is a passively cooled sink, so if you're not concerned about the few degrees centigrade difference, but are majorly concerned about noise, you can get a passively cooled one that doesn't cool as well as stock sink, but it also has no fan.

  11. Review packaging but not noise? by btempleton · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I mean it just seems to me to be ridiculous to have detailed review of the packaging of all these coolers, and to pick a winner on something we'll throw out, but not to measure one of the most important factors in choosing a cooler -- noise levels.

    I just can't fathom why the packaging review, it makes me suspect the motives of the whole thing.

    --
    Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
  12. What about dust? by justthinkit · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I've have a (sucky) Dell desktop and when it is clean inside it runs quietly, even at 100% CPU load. Then as the days go by and the dog scratches his derriere repeatedly the fan noise rises. After about 10 days to two weeks I have to shut it down, vacuum it thoroughly inside and it is quiet once again.

    So, how do these coolers perform with some dust in them? That is the cooler I want for the increased uptime.

    --
    I come here for the love
  13. Frustratingly misguided by Gordo_1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ok, why would anyone spend $50+ to buy one of these monstrosities? Two reasons:

    1. You want safe overclocked performance from the latest Core2Duo processors
    2. You want a 'quiet' CPU cooling solution

    This review utterly failed to achieve either end-user goal because they failed to even attempt to control variables, among other problems. Instead they:

    1. Completely ignored noise as an issue. Sure the winning heatsink has huge heat pipes and all, but does its built-in fan sound like a jet engine to achieve its mark?
    2. Did not standardize on a single 3rd-party fan to control for the huge variance in quality from one manufacturer to another.
    3. Did not standardize on a single high performance thermal compound, but rather used whatever cheap goo each manufacturer stuck in the box.
    4. No indication whether any of the extra cooling performance achieved by the top sinks actually has any positive effect on overclockability (aside from noise, the only other reason why you might reasonably consider one of these heatsinks). Many overclockers fail to achieve >50% overclocks of Core2Duo due to voltage regulation, memory or chipset cooling issues, independent of CPU cooling. For example, if your motherboard can't maintain a consistent voltage for the CPU under load, it doesn't matter that your heatsink achieves -270 degrees Kelvin.

    So, in summary, all I've found out is which retail combination keeps my CPU coolest, irregardless of noise and whether the extra cooling performance actually matters. Hmmmm...great. IMHO, if you need to buy one of these things (like I did a while back) do yourself a favor and go read http://www.silentpcreview.com/ . They're a lot more scientific about their methodology.

    Disclaimer: I do not and have not ever worked for, nor do I know anyone who works for SilentPCReview, I just happen to think their testing methods suck a lot less.