Corsair Hydro H80 on a Q9550

Mikey · 24 May 2012 at 09:27

Anyone using one of the Hydro H80 coolers on a 775 Q9550 CPU?

Mulling a purchased etc.

MoRT489 · 18 Jun 2012 at 10:08

Would also be interested to know people temps with this combo

CinderzFTW · 18 Jun 2012 at 23:10

should be ok... the lga775 quad are known to run quite hot sometimes, so that seems like a good combination

MoRT489 · 22 Jun 2012 at 17:03

Just bought the H80 from OCUk, hoping nit will fit on my P5Q Premium (will need to rotate the cooler 90º otherwise it rests on the capacitors).

Marine-RX179 · 22 Jun 2012 at 17:33

Well, the way I see it...if you are thinking of getting a new H80 at around £80 for the sake of overclocking your Q9550, you would be better off selling your Q9550 and get a Z77 bother for around £80~£90 and a i3 2120 for around £90.

The i3 2120 would be as fast as the Q9550 at 3.8-4.0GHz, but faster in games that use less than 4 cores due to the faster IPC. Not only that, you'd also open up the upgrade path for the future. But personally I would go for a 2nd hand i5 2500L at around £110~£130.

smilertoo · 22 Jun 2012 at 19:14

the problem there is who would buy the q9550 setup if its so cheap to buy the replacement.

jaybee · 25 Jun 2012 at 12:59

I've been debating running a Hydro sealed unit on my q9450 as well. I'm fairly happy with my now years old TRUE (Thermalright Ultra Extreme - big air cooler for those who don't know which was king of the hill many years ago) with two Noctuas running push pull at very low speed. Temps I seem to recall are within a reasonable level. I like it very quiet though my machine. H80 is £80. If I could run it as quiet, would it cool BETTER, otherwise pointless for me. I do like the look of them in that they take up less space than a big ugly air cooler, but not worth £80 just for that I don't think.
They probably will work quite well on a core2quad to be fair as they pump out heat. If oyu try it, let me know.

jaybee · 25 Jun 2012 at 13:00

MoRT489 said:
Just bought the H80 from OCUk, hoping nit will fit on my P5Q Premium (will need to rotate the cooler 90º otherwise it rests on the capacitors).

How did you get on? Pics? What exact board is it please the long name as I think I might have the same or similar board.

Marine-RX179 · 25 Jun 2012 at 13:26

smilertoo said:
the problem there is who would buy the q9550 setup if its so cheap to buy the replacement.

Because people still pay stupid money for the Q9550 on the bay? The money he get would probably be (close) enough to get a i3 2120. And rather than spending £80 on a CPU cooler, he can get a Z77 motherboard instead. As for memory of he got DDR3 he can reused them, if not he can selling the DDR2, and get some DDR3 (DDR3 memory are dirt cheap to the point that the money he get for selling hi 4GB of DDR2 could be enough for getting 8GB of DDR3 new lol)

jaybee · 25 Jun 2012 at 14:28

Selling a 775 mobo and cpu will probably net him £80 ish. A board and new equivalent CPU like an i5 would easily cost £200 second hand. Cost is £120 to upgrade but he would still need a decent CPU cooler. His current one may not support new sockets. Yeah, it is close, and I have been down that road but where do you draw the line. Nothing really wrong with a decent 775 setup still, plenty of life left.

Marine-RX179 · 25 Jun 2012 at 14:38

jaybee said:
Selling a 775 mobo and cpu will probably net him £80 ish. A board and new equivalent CPU like an i5 would easily cost £200 second hand. Cost is £120 to upgrade but he would still need a decent CPU cooler. His current one may not support new sockets. Yeah, it is close, and I have been down that road but where do you draw the line. Nothing really wrong with a decent 775 setup still, plenty of life left.

Actually the Q9550 would already net him around £80+, regardless of he might or might not be able to sell his motherboard. Despite the i3 2120 won't overclock, on stock clock would be as fast as Core2Quad at around 3.8-4.0GHz in games that use 4 or more cores, and FASTER in games that use less than 4 cores. The stock cooler for the i3 2120 is more than enough, as the i3 2120 has lower power consumption and generate much less heat. So it doesn't really cost much for an upgrade, and open up a future upgrade path. I just don't see the worth of spending £80 on a CPU cooler for overclocking the Q9550 to get worse gaming gaming performance than a i3 2120.

Bottomline is it's not worth getting a £80 CPU cooler for overclocking the Q9550...if he want to stick with what he got, some decent £30~£50 air cooler will do the job.

jaybee · 25 Jun 2012 at 14:45

Is the i3 2120 better in all aspects than a core2quad at 4ghz? Not gaming, I mean apps based performance. I was unaware they are worth that much.

Justintime · 25 Jun 2012 at 14:47

Q9550s are going for well over 100 quid in many places.

Marine-RX179 · 25 Jun 2012 at 14:50

jaybee said:
Is the i3 2120 better in all aspects than a core2quad at 4ghz? Not gaming, I mean apps based performance. I was unaware they are worth that much.

The Core2Quad at 4GHz would probably be a bit faster than the SB i3 for heavy-duty stuffs like encoding, but for most general usage and gaming, the i3 2120 would be faster. But the IB i3 would probably be faster than the Core2Quad 4.0GHz at everything (hopefully).

Also, new i3 that based on the IvyBridge is coming this week (if no delay), so the i3 will be even faster (but probably for £10 more than i3 2120).

So to break down for the OP:

So basically selling the Q9550 and get a Ivy i3: cost next to nothing...might even get some spare change if lucky

Spend the £80 on a Z77 motherboard instead of a Corsair H80: cost not much extra

Selling the 4GB DDR2 (assuming that's what the OP got) for around £30-£35 and get 8GB DDR3 memory: Cost may be £5 more

Rroff · 25 Jun 2012 at 14:54

Going to a i3 21xx is bad advice - stock for stock theres barely anything in it and you just spend money and put effort into reinstalling, etc. to see very marginal gains at best in the real world you probably won't actually notice the difference (even in games its generally ~5% difference) - if your going to change out the motherboard, RAM and CPU do it proper and go for a generation leap in performance.

Overclocking a Q9550 seems to depend more on the quality of the motherboard more than anything else - I've been using a Coolermaster V8 with mine (fan modded) and I've tried various boards from the current nForce which is pretty poor and P35, 45, etc. boards with wildly different max overclocking results without any change to the cooler (I've been all the way upto 4.6gig with mine without any significant cooling issues using a fairly middle of the road air cooler).

Marine-RX179 · 25 Jun 2012 at 15:04

Rroff said:
Going to a i3 21xx is bad advice - stock for stock theres barely anything in it and you just spend money and put effort into reinstalling, etc. to see very marginal gains at best in the real world you probably won't actually notice the difference (even in games its generally ~5% difference) - if your going to change out the motherboard, RAM and CPU do it proper and go for a generation leap in performance.

Overclocking a Q9550 seems to depend more on the quality of the motherboard more than anything else - I've been using a Coolermaster V8 with mine (fan modded) and I've tried various boards from the current nForce which is pretty poor and P35, 45, etc. boards with wildly different max overclocking results without any change to the cooler (I've been all the way upto 4.6gig with mine without any significant cooling issues using a fairly middle of the road air cooler).

Considering if the OP is gonna blow £80 for the sake of overlocking the Q9550, then going i3 and save the money from the cooler is actually more production overall.

On games like BF true the performance difference between the i3 2120 wouldn't be much as the game would take advantage of using all four cores, but games that use less than 4 cores it will make the Q9550 cry WILL have noticably worse performance than the i3 2120.

But yea I agree i3 2120 is now indeed bad advise, considering IvyBridge i3 is now around the corner. No despect to you Rroff...I know you love your Q9550, but don't honestly tell me you haven't seen your GTX470SLI getting bottlenecked yet...in for example say...Crysis...which only use up to 2 threads?

jaybee · 25 Jun 2012 at 15:06

Justintime said:
Q9550s are going for well over 100 quid in many places.

Hmm..really? I have a q9450 (ok not as good) and last time I checked they were only worth about £45.

Rroff · 25 Jun 2012 at 15:07

Marine-RX179 said:
Considering if the OP is gonna blow £80 for the sake of overlocking the Q9550, then going i3 and save the money from the cooler is actually more production overall.

On games like BF true the performance difference between the i3 2120 wouldn't be much as the game would take advantage of using all four cores, but games that use less than 4 cores it will make the Q9550 cry WILL have noticably worse performance than the i3 2120.

But yea I agree i3 2120 is now indeed bad advise, considering a month has passed, and IvyBridge i3 is now around the corner.

Yeah I wouldn't reccomend spending £80 on a cooler for a Q9550 either... tbh I'm hard pressed to reccomend to anyone to upgrade from a Q9550 unless they are spending a lot of time playing specific games or doing specific desktop tasks as it still holds its own for general gaming and general OS use. Be much better saving the £80 towards a full upgrade on the 2nd IB iteration.

Rroff · 25 Jun 2012 at 15:09

jaybee said:
Hmm..really? I have a q9450 (ok not as good) and last time I checked they were only worth about £45.

Q9450s don't go for so much as the lower multi make them harder to overclock and they can already be hard to overclock on older LGA775 boards.

Justintime · 26 Jun 2012 at 07:00

jaybee said:
Hmm..really? I have a q9450 (ok not as good) and last time I checked they were only worth about £45.

Where did you check? Q9450 till goes for 100 more or less on some well known auction sites.