cheapest cooler to hit 4.5-4.8GHz on 2500k.....

Soldato
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What does the stock cooler get you out of interest?

If you take it easy, around 4ghz. Though I would suspect the temps to be borderline.

As mentioned sandy is a relatively cool running set of chips. You should easily be able to get away with clocks as high as 4.5ghz on a decent £30 cooler. Any higher and you should really be looking at high end air or water

iirc I had my 2600K @ 4.6ghz with an arctic cooling freezer pro 13 hitting temps in the low to mid 70's. H80 @ 4.8ghz in the high 60's low 70's and now custom water @ 4.8ghz giving temps in the high 40's to low 50's.

Remember stress temps, especially in IBT will be a great deal higher than heavy gaming stress. When I had my H80 gaming temps would often be 15c or so lower than IBT temps.
 
Caporegime
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I have a 2500K with a Xigmatek Gaia fitted and it does 4.2 ridiculously easy (nice and quiet too), that's in an Antec 300 with only an extractor fan so not the best ventilation.

I reckon it could do 4.4-4.5ghz easy enough with one as long as you don't have a stinker of a chip and need to start throwing high volts at it, once you start pumping the volts you're going to need one of the more expensive coolers, if you have memory that runs at 1.5V or less that should also help with temps.
 
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Soldato
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I have a Corsair A50 on my 2500k £21 inc VAT

also, I have used a THIN line of MX3 compound

Running 4.6ghz 24/7. Fully stable (loads of IBT / Prime95 suicide runs)

Temps have never gone over 57c

This is using one corsair fan which came in the box. I use Akasa Blacks in Push/Pull but unfortunately made ZERO difference. Temps still peaked at 57c

Great result for £21. Now I may have a great chip, not sure :confused:
 
Associate
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Is the original Akasa Venom still considered a decent cooler for the 2500k? I'm currently using one on my existing rig but want to swap it over when I do a system wide upgrade in a couple of months; or am I going to have to bite the bullet and get a beefier one?
 
Caporegime
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After much research I've decided that all the half decent coolers use the backplate mounting method so I can't be lazy and I'll have to remove everything from my case to affix it :(

A50 looks like the best value one.
 
Soldato
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The Alpenföhn K2 looks like a great piece of kit but i cant help but think it cant be doing the motherboard any good having all that weight hanging down on it :)
 
Associate
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The cheapest cooler that I have personally used to hit 4.7GHz on a 2600K is the Akasa Venom Voodoo. It was hitting around 85°C with my hot CPU though.

If you have your own fans to use the Megahalems is an excellent choice provided the fans are fairly decent. If you don't have your own fans to use with it, it becomes a more expensive option.

My Hyper 212+ performed excellently at 4.5GHz with room to spare, so if you're feeling risky that may be worth a try.
 
OcUK Staff
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have to remove everything from my case to affix it :

Remove everything?, why? all you would need to do is unplug all wires from the board and unscrew it and lift it out. 5 min job max. then once its fitted you just place it back in and screw it back down. 15 mins from start to finish.
 
Associate
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Alpenföhn doesnt get much press but i have one of their coolers on my 1055T and the idle temp is always exactly at room temp (16deg-19deg usually) when using windows for web, youtube! maxed out at near 4.0ghz i get 46.5-47deg which i am happy with on the 1055T as its hotter than the SB 2500

btw 60 notes on a cooler is a very good idea imo as you wish to go ultra high end near 5.0ghz on a powerfull top end cpu (given that most joes wont overclock and will use a base level cpu model) it might be easy to achieve but were still talking cutting edge speeds here
 
Soldato
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Permabanned
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I have a Corsair A50 on my 2500k £21 inc VAT

also, I have used a THIN line of MX3 compound

Running 4.6ghz 24/7. Fully stable (loads of IBT / Prime95 suicide runs)

Temps have never gone over 57c

This is using one corsair fan which came in the box. I use Akasa Blacks in Push/Pull but unfortunately made ZERO difference. Temps still peaked at 57c

Great result for £21. Now I may have a great chip, not sure :confused:

Yes, agree with this, I used a corsair A50 on my i5 2500k for six months @4.6ghz it isles around 35c and in the late 50's low 60's during gaming. You really don't need to spend blg money, check out overclocked gaming bundles on overclockers they bundle the A50 with them. If you want more than 4.6ghz then you should consider a more expensive one.
 
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Yes, agree with this, I used a corsair A50 on my i5 2500k for six months @4.6ghz it isles around 35c and in the late 50's low 60's during gaming. You really don't need to spend blg money, check out overclocked gaming bundles on overclockers they bundle the A50 with them. If you want more than 4.6ghz then you should consider a more expensive one.

That is very good, pretty much the exact same temps I get with my Venom, even though mine does idle at around 32 and never gets into 60 but low 50's when gaming. But for that price and those temps are really safe that cooler is a steal at £21, mine was around £37.
 
Soldato
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quite tempted to get a megahalem and put a spectre pro on it.

i take it i could add the cpu fan to a fan controller if i put a jumper on the cpu fan header? or if i had a mobo that i could disable the cpu fan warning?

meh, see how much £££ i got when i do the build.... car insurance just got renewed and for the first time ever i had money to pay it outright instead of monthly.... saves me over £100 over the year but i got nothing left for my damn build now lol. need a build by 15/5, mmmmm d3.

on a unrelated matter, any one had success with decking out their case with foam? (probably generic studio egg box stuff not made for pcs). was the sound deadening good? worth the extra heat?
 
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