AMD 8150 Cooling

legraudal

legraudal

legraudal

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Hello, please bear with me, this is my first post.. :)

I'm wondering which cooler would be optimal to use if i'm going to overclock my 8150 @ roundabout 4 - 4,5 GHz.

On one side there is the Noctua NH-L12

and on the other i'm thinking about Corsair H60 Hydro Series...

I'm aware that one of them is airbased and the other is liquid cooling and the difference in cost is only 10€..
 
Hi there and welcome to the OCUK forums :)

Personally I would recommend you go for an air cooler, unless you want to go all-out and set up a custom watercooled system.

I say this because the captive liquid coolers (like the H60) tend to be more expensive than air coolers which offer the same cooling performance, while also running louder. Also there is the chance (albeit a small one) of it springing a leak (one of my mates had this problem with his H50). That said, for using a large air cooler you will need a decent-size case (if the rear exhaust fan is 120mm then you are usually fine).

If you are looking in the ~£50 price bracket then I would be looking at air coolers like:

Prolimatech megahalems (plus a nice fan like this one)
Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme or Venomous X (plus a good fan)
BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro
Titan Fenrir Evo
Thermalright Archon
Thermalright Silver Arrow

Also, may I ask have you already bought the FX-8150 CPU yet and what your main use of the PC is?
 
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I haven't bought the CPU yet.. But i'm thinking of overclocking it and primarily use it for playing Empire, napoleon total war and some BF3. THe reason why i chose the 8150 is because it is fairly cheaper than an i7 and from what i know almost delivers the same performance as the i7 when gaming... It would also be easier to upgrade because when AMD releases a new CPU you rarely need to buy a new mobo, as when Intel releases new processors where you have to buy a new mobo because of a new kind of socket is used.. :)
 
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The information you've collected on the 8150 is wrong I'm afraid. It doesn't come close to the i7 for gaming.

You'll get much more bang for buck with Intel, and in a lower thermal package, easier to overclock and easier to cool.
 
Ah, you haven't bought the CPU yet and you will be mainly gaming?

In that case I would strongly recommend you not go for an AMD Bulldozer (or in Intel i7) but instead an Intel i5 like the i5 2500k.

for gaming, the i5 2500k is just as fast as an i7 at the same clockspeed(since games don't make use of hyperthreading), it overclocks easily, runs cool and crucially is much faster than an amd fx-8150 in games. also, if you go for a sandy bridge i5 like the 2500k then the upcoming ivy bridge (22nm) intel cpus will work with your existing board (with a bios update).

here are some gaming performance comparisons of the i5 2500k and the fx-8150:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested/8
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-7-hotfix-bulldozer-performance,3119-4.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/452-amd-bulldozer-fx-cpus/page10.html
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/10/12/amd-fx-8150-review/9
 
well then.. i7 2600k vs. 3820?? which one should i choose?

If the intel i5 is better than the 8150, why shouldn't i go for an i7 if it's inside my budget as future games may take advantage of hyperthreading technology?
 
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2500K is what I would suggest too. You'll not see any tangible benefit in games going for the much more expensive 2600K or 3820
 
legraudal said:
well then.. i7 2600k vs. 3820?? which one should i choose?
Click to expand...

Unless you need the benefits of hyperthreading (up to ~20% performance boost in highly threaded applications, no boost in games) then I wouldn't go with an i7 and instead go for an i5.

The i5 is a quad core sandy bridge architecture CPU just like the i7 2600K, it just has no hyperthreading, a slightly lower stock clockspeed (which makes no matter if you do any overclocking - which is made simple with the unlocked multiplier) and slightly less L3 cache (I haven't seen any benchmarks showing this makes any performance difference in the real world).

As for the i7 3820 all of the points made above about the i7 2600K apply, however the i7 3820 is not a K series CPU so the cpu multiplier is unlocked. Therefore, you need to overclock using the BLCK (which is possible using the X79 platform) and overclocking and performance results are roughly in-line with the i7 2600K (though bear in mind that the 3820 is a 130W CPU, not a 95W - so better cooling will be needed for overclocking).

The real benefit (and drawback) of the 3820 is the use of the high-end X79 platform. This mean motherboards are much more expensive than the Z68 boards (used with i7 2600K and i5 2500K CPUs), but you get many more PCIE lanes (which for a gamer is only of use if you plan to run three graphics cards or more), can run quad channel memory (which is of no benefit for gamers), natively supports PCIE gen3 (currently top-end graphics cards show no benefit of a x16 PCIE gen3 slot compared to x16 gen2 slot, but this may change with future cards) and will run future Ivy Bridge-E CPUs.

Basically, for a gamer a i7 3820 is pretty much overkill since it only offers performance on the level of the i5 2500K in games while using more money (which could be spent on a faster graphics card, SSD or CPU cooler).
 
That ASUS is a decent board, but for that price range I would personally go for this gigabyte board instead.

That said, these lower-end Z68 boards only have the second main PCIE slot running at x4 speed (compared to x8 on the higher-end boards), they also don't support SLI. Therefore, if you think you may use a second graphics card in SLI/CF at some point then I would recommend you go for a board like this one - which also supports PCIE gen3 (when used with an Ivy Bridge CPU). This board also has a lot of positive user feedback.
 
The main benefit of the onboard graphics core to a gamer is the availability of a backup graphics core. This can be very useful if you are having trouble with your main graphics card (to help confirm the GPU is the problem and as a temporary GPU if you need to RMA the graphics card).

It also gives you the ability to add in extra non-gaming monitors (which can be very useful if you main card only supports 2).

Finally, if you do any video editing, the onboard graphics is used (in conjunction with the CPU cores) to provide Quick Sync - a very fast and high quality method to transcode video.

Since you aren't paying much extra money to get access to the graphics core then I would go with one that does allow access - like the Z68XP-UD3.

As for Sabertooth P67 vs Z68XP-UD3 - I would go with the Gigabyte Z68XP UD3, for the above reasons with the graphics core. Z68 boards also feature SSD Caching technology (called SRT). Also, looking at current pricing the Sabretooth P67 is very expensive for what it is (it is mainly inflated as P67 boards are less common now) and the Gigabyte is much better value - since it overclocks just as well, offers more features, costs less and the gigabyte warranty service is better than ASUS.
 
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Okay.. Back to the cooling topic. Will the Cooler Master Hyper TX3 be enough for overclocking an i5 2500k @4 Ghz? or should i go for something more extreme? Or would adding another fan be enough?
 
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For 4GHz, yes a low cost 92mm fan cooler like the TX3 will be fine.

However, if you want to take it to ~4.5GHz then you should go for a good quality cooler with a 120mm fan. This one is very popular with the i5 2500K.
 
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