Best CPU Cooler (Athlon 64)

N

n00bst3r

Guest
What is the best cooler for the Athlon 64.
Also what is the best Northbridge cooling solution for the K8T Neo?
(Except watercooling)

EDIT:
(Or Nitrogen)
(Or Compression Cooling)
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Hi,

Well, use the standard amd cooler, obvious? When I bought my 3200 three months ago it came complete in a box with amd-cooler. Don't know if it is available as a separate!
Very quiet and together with the standard amd cool/quiet function everything is at half speed most of the time.
In the near future amd sells their cpu's only in a box(with cooler) and not anymore without.
Extra Northbridge cooling? Why is that? My pc is sometimes active for more then 3 days without interruption, never any problem with overheating/cooling.

Gr,
:biggthumbsup:
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Well you can buy CPU's two basic ways; Retail Box (Includes Fan/Heatsink and instructions), or you can buy OEM (Original Equipment Manufactures) which does not come with the goodies. OEM is typically used by system builders to allow them choices in equipment they use in the build as well as saving a couple bucks.

There is nothing wrong going either way. But if you buy an OEM CPU then you will also have to buy; a Heatsink, a Fan, and Thermal transfer material such as Thermal pads or Grease. Like anything else in your computer quality matters. I would not recommend buying the cheapest or even the first item you find. Take some time and do research as this can be as important as the RAM or Hard Drives that you use. Also remember that if you chose to go the OEM route then any problems are on you rather than the manufactures as they will likely not have a warrenty that will cover damage by using a product they do not recommend and they certainly don't cover your mistakes.

Good points:

Retail box CPU's - Average performance for cooling, Warrentied better, no research needed.

OEM solutions - Possible better thermal transfer and cooling, ability to customize your rig.

Bad points:

Retail Box - Average performance, No fancy LED fans or other points that current case modders would chose.

OEM - Research needed, Lack of good warrenty solutions, possible damage to componants if you buy cheap product or put it together wrong.

It all comes down to what choice is best for you. If you overclock then OEM with a good cooling setup will help you get top performance. Yet Retail does suit a large percentage of folks out there building their own computers as it offers a good all around solid performance with no need to learn the in's and outs of the cooling game.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Badest A64 coolers are:
Alpha Pal 8150, Zalman 7000 and the Thermalrigth SLK 948u. These are the true heavyweights. Swiftech coming out this month with theirs, or so they said.

I'd like to point out tho that it seems that the A64 does not dissipate 89Watts of heat as specified by AMD thermal design guide so no "heavy weight" is needed, so far :)

I can recomend the Alpha and Zalman since I have both, the SLK is super good too but suposedly it makes the fan generate more noise due to it's fin design, which is very tight. All of these coolers are within 1c or 2c of each other.

For the more price friendly and not as good but good all the same you have the such as Thermaltake and Coolermaster making after market coolers for the A64 and more coming.

Simon
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Personally,

I bought my Athlon 64 3200+ retail in-box with heatsink n fan and the ThermalTake Silent Boost K8, the reason I did this is,

A: the retail box Athlon 64 3200+ only cost me $330 Canadian, well with shipping and all it was $373 Canadian, but still, $330 CAD :biggrin: :biggthumbsup: (I love eBay.ca :biggrin: as I live in Canada) that's about $246 USD hehe :lol_anim:

B: Even though I'll be using the Silent Boost K8, I'll have the retail heatsink and fan as a backup, if for any reason the Silent boost K8 fails, I won't be stuck keeping my PC off because I have no CPU cooling.

Hehe, on my old PC, XP2000+ and so on, one day, the fan on my Thermaltake Volcano 7 decides to kill over, so I quickly grabbed my wallet and ran over to the local electronics store and had to settle for a retail coolermaster HSF rated up to XP2500+, not the best $17 Canadian spent, but it's doing well so far, I sold my old PC, so it's not my worry anymore :-))

Anyway, that long and utterly useless storie's moral was, at least with retail box, you have a decent backup CPU cooling solution until you get a new replacement.

Later all :biggthumbsup:

Regards,

FrAnK

(Going for most edited post record, lol, just kiddin):rtfm:
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
This is optimal for my system:

Thermaltake K8 Silent Boost with the fan replaced by Papst 1200 rpm one.
Extremely quiet. Never gets warmer than 40C/107F (this winter anyways)

I had an Alpha on my previous system and think the Silent Boost is a better
heatsink thought the stock fan is not exactly quiet. I didn't like the Zalman
because it's large and heavy and the fan can't be replaced as easily.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I'm running the Zalman CNPS7000-AlCu and love it. Quiet, and my idle temps usually hover one or two degrees below case temps. Load temps have never hit 50 degrees.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
> why did you have to replace the fan on the "silent" boost? Wasn't it silent?

Well, I guess silence can only be judged in relative terms. But there was a definite
hum to the stock fan. Not obnoxious, but not silent by any means. I wouldn't
even call the Papst silent either, there is a faint whine in a very quiet room but
much below the Thermaltake's hum.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Go for Zalman, it seems the best out of all the reviews I have read. I'm using a Coolermaster KK8-7I52A, which I consider to be good. It's silent, my temps are about 40 C idle to 45 C load (approx). I also think that it is good value for the money.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I have the thermaltake venus12, its basically the noisy version of the Silent K8 someone mentioned above, but even with the fan at 3000rpm i have never had a temperature above 44 degrees, and the thing goes up to a rather noisy 5500rpm, noise of the fan doesnt really bother me tho, as i have headphones on mostly and thus cant hear it :-))
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I'll put my vote in for the Zalman CNPS7000-Cu. Load temps usually don't exceed idle temps by more than 2 or 3 degrees. I originally bought the Zalman for a P4, fortunately it came with socket 754 hardware.

Some have bought the part aluminum version due to weight issues, but with the back plate I'm not too worried about the copper version weight; although I probably will not ship the computer via UPS without removing the HSF.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I was thinking either the Zalman or the Thermaltake Venus 12. The only thing holding me back on the Venus is I frankly do not trust Thermaltake's stuff. Heard a few horror stories taht scared me away.

What about a Northbridge cooler. I'd like to squeese a few more mhz out of this beast.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
There's not too much that can go wrong with a heatsink, other than not applying
the paste and mounting it correctly. Fans may give you reason to be wary of
poor quality.

The Papst 1200 RPM fan is probably a fair amount quieter than the Zalman.
But its speed would not register with the BIOS and I would presume neither
with Cool'N Quiet which I don't use (no need with that combo). With my
earlier AMD MP motherboard, the speed did register and it varied about 80
RPM's. So the BIOS or motherboard has some limitations. Probably the RPM
was too low to detect.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
The biggest holdup to severe overclocking is the difinative lack of an AGP/PCI lock. Without those the AGP/PCI bus are tied to the FSB and as you increase the speed you are also putting those buses out of spec far enough as to cause issues. Without a fix foir that you won't get enough of a gain with a fan to nake any real difference.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
i just ordered a thermalright slk-948-u and vantec 92cc tornado. i understand it's louder than hell, cool.

and as to this issue of lack of lock on the agp/pci bus. here's what i find interested: by simply setting System Performance to 'Turbo' in the bios, my core clock on my r9800p went from 378mhz to 391mhz, and the ddr speed increased from 338mhz to 351mhz. The increase is linear in rise between the two.
when i set the system performance to 'Fast' and increase the cpu fsb clock to any speed, the r9800p gpu and mem remain at default. Run 3dmark2003 and see for yourself.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I have the thermaltake silent boost k8, and aren't particularly impressed by it.

Sure, it is quiet, but it's cooling leaves a lot to be desired.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Originally posted by scottg26
I have the thermaltake silent boost k8, and aren't particularly impressed by it.

Sure, it is quiet, but it's cooling leaves a lot to be desired.
Click to expand...

What are your temps? Did you use AS5? I love the K8 Boost.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Back
Top