cooler recommendations

subway

looking for a large, silent cpu cooler.
its for an AM3 processor.

guess budget of around 50eu should cover it?
any suggestions or recommendations?


thanks

Solitaire

Silent as in "quiet" or "silent"?

This thread is going to end quickly and happily in the first case. In the second it'll be just a bit messier...

subway

not going watercooled if thats what you mean.
as close to inaudible as you can get with a normal fan/radiator setup

cherryghost

i got a zalman air cooler with no fan. is that quiet enough for ya?

ninja 12

I'm using a Xigmatek Achilles in my office pc .

It keeps my cpu (Athlon II x4 620 , overclocked to 3.126ghz) a couple of degrees above ambient room temp at idle , and the highest I've seen it under full load is 36 degrees :eek:

My case has very good airflow - Antec 300 .




I have the fan running at 50% speed and the fan is very quiet .


NOTE -
Depending on your case layout , it might not suit . Due to the AMD mounting bracket it can only be mounted facing one way , as seen in the pic . My case has a fan at the top as well as the rear , so it works fine and the Xigmatek blows the warm air directly at the top case fan .

I bought it from Amazon , with free shipping - click here .

I also used Arctic Silver 5.

You could always use a Xigmatek Thor's Hammer or Scythe Ninja in passive mode - no fan , but you would need excellent airflow . I have a Thor's Hammer in my htpc with no fan on it , it's only cooling an AMD 5050e

Hope this helps.

Solitaire

I was thinking maybe a Hyper 212 Plus, Scythe Mugen 2 or similar cheapish tower retrofitted with a cheapie 120mm FDB fan (they have lovely Arctics on QuietPC.ie for a fiver!) would be a very quiet combination. If you need more cooling power than that its Noctua time

Dixy

All the Noctua's are excellent coolers
I run this in an Antec 1200 and the i5 750 idle's at 22 degree's
Stock Intel cooler idle's on the same chip at 51.

cherryghost

Titan Fenrir ftw

Deano12345

If your running at stock speeds, then you may be able to get away with running passive cooling on the CPU.

If not, I'd probably go with the Hyper 212+ as suggested above with some Scythe Gentle Typhoon fans if you need some added performance

subway

right, heres some more background...
its a media centre pc, its contained within the walls of my house (old heating system)
ive recently upgraded from a dell that was silent to this home made machine as i needed more processing power for HD sky.

the ventilation around it isnt great, theres a wall vent into it and about 2 foot of space above with no other vents. the case is on its side with the panel off.

the dell worked fine in this space, with the side panel on for almost a year and is still going strong now.

this machine seems to be struggling with the heat at the minute as i can hear it through the vent.

so, any thoughts on which cooler will be best for this situation?

ninja 12

subway wrote: »

right, heres some more background...
its a media centre pc, its contained within the walls of my house (old heating system)
ive recently upgraded from a dell that was silent to this home made machine as i needed more processing power for HD sky.

the ventilation around it isnt great, theres a wall vent into it and about 2 foot of space above with no other vents. the case is on its side with the panel off.

the dell worked fine in this space, with the side panel on for almost a year and is still going strong now.

this machine seems to be struggling with the heat at the minute as i can hear it through the vent.

so, any thoughts on which cooler will be best for this situation?

Which AM3 CPU are you using ?
Are you still using the stock AMD cooler ?
I found the fan on my stock cooler very buzzy when it sped up .

What are the idle and load temps ? You can use HWMonitor - click here .

Don't forget , just because a cpu is running warm doesn't mean it's about to keel over .

I've just run Prime95 for an hour on my media PC , and the temp maxed out at 56 degrees , (AMD 5050e , Xigmatek Thor's Hammer with no fan . My case has only one exhaust fan ) and the room temp was about 25 degrees . As soon as I exited Prime , the temp dropped back to 36-38 degrees .

My CPU is rated up to 78 degrees so I'm still well within it's safe limits .

subway

ninja 12 wrote: »

Which AM3 CPU are you using ?
Are you still using the stock AMD cooler ?
I found the fan on my stock cooler very buzzy when it sped up .

this config, stock cooler
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=64696639&postcount=9

ninja 12 wrote: »

What are the idle and load temps ? You can use HWMonitor - click here .

will run this later today and post the results.

ninja 12 wrote: »

Don't forget , just because a cpu is running warm doesn't mean it's about to keel over .

I've just run Prime95 for an hour on my media PC , and the temp maxed out at 56 degrees , (AMD 5050e , Xigmatek Thor's Hammer with no fan . My case has only one exhaust fan ) and the room temp was about 25 degrees . As soon as I exited Prime , the temp dropped back to 36-38 degrees .

My CPU is rated up to 71 degrees so I'm still well within it's safe limits .

i know what you mean, the actual cooling isnt my primary concern, the cpu is actually being pushed to its limit at any time. the problem is that the fan is quite noisy and im putting this down to size & location of the box.
the dell has a huge heatsink and was always ultra quiet so i want to replicate that setup again.

ninja 12

Here's the specs for yur CPU - Click here

It's rated up to 71 degrees , so I wouldn't worry too much about the temps as long as it doesn't stay above 60 degrees for too long .

If the airflow isn't great I would reccomend a large heatsink with a quiet fan (Something that uses a 12cm fan ) -
Xigmatek Achilles / Dark night , Scythe Ninja / Mugen , Zalman , Noctua etc .

Even if you think the fan that comes with a heatsink is to loud you could replace the fan for something quieter or buy a zalman fanmate and reduce the fan speed . (Noctua fans come with inline resistors to reduce the speed )

Yoiu should also use good thermal paste (I use Arctic Silver 5 )

Hope this helps .

Alt_Grrr

subway wrote: »

the problem is that the fan is quite noisy

I've the same config and that is an understatement.
its very noisy.
VERY noisy.

You could replace the fan on top with a silent one, or go the whole hog and get a new heat sink.

I'm replacing the heat sink on mine too.

subway

temps are as follows
mobo
1 - 53
2 - 48
3 - 47

cpu
core 1 - 41
core 2 - 41
core 3 - 40
core 4 - 40

gpu (8600 GTS)
68

hdd
asemmbly 50
air flow 50

having a look at a few of the options now