I7 3820 X79 Cooling

PhoenixSP

PhoenixSP

PhoenixSP

Associate
Joined
20 Jan 2009
Posts
472
Location
Cornwall
So i took the plunge and ordered the I7 3820 and the Gigabyte UP 4 along with the cm storm trooper , all was going fine until I tried to fit my old silver arrow cpu cooler to it . Seems my fittings are now outdated and if i want the fittings for a £1 screw set i have the joy of £10 postage. So with that in mind and the problems i have read about x79 and the clearance issues between the heatsink and gfx cards when using crossfire can you please advise a good cooler , budget of £70 tops which will cool the 3820 and any upgraded Ivybridge E chip whilst allowing enough room for crossfire GPU's.
 
I have a Rampage IV Extreme fitted with a Noctua DH-14, with my old 680 GTX the fan clips just cleared the back of the cards pcb.
I now have a 7970 Matrix Platinum which has an alloy back plate and the fan clips touch the cards back plate.

Hope this gives you some answers :)

Also bear in mind that the Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom's fan clips stick out further than the Noctua's DH-14 fan clips.
 
Last edited:
Hmm this is a tough one. With my R4E for instance, the CPU socket is aligned right along the middle of the the memory modules whereas with the UP4, it is offset further down meaning in your case, the CPU socket is closer to the top PCIe slot than my R4E's. In my case, a K2 would still allow me to just about install a GPU in the top slot but this will not work for you. The Silver Arrow including the newer SB-E ones are slightly wider still so as you've mentioned, they aren't ideal. The Phanteks PH-TC14PE and the Noctua NH-D14 are narrower than the SA by 7mm (or 3.5mm if you only look at one half).

What you can do is find out by how much the SA overhangs the top GPU slot and from that we can see how wide a cooler you can have.

Do you currently use Crossfire or is that something you've only considered for the future?
 
I ended up with a H100i, not the greatest cooler out there (rubbish software, whining fans etc) but it left loads of space around the CPU socket and didn't cause clearance issues with SLI.
 
Helios1234 said:
Hmm this is a tough one. With my R4E for instance, the CPU socket is aligned right along the middle of the the memory modules whereas with the UP4, it is offset further down meaning in your case, the CPU socket is closer to the top PCIe slot than my R4E's. In my case, a K2 would still allow me to just about install a GPU in the top slot but this will not work for you. The Silver Arrow including the newer SB-E ones are slightly wider still so as you've mentioned, they aren't ideal. The Phanteks PH-TC14PE and the Noctua NH-D14 are narrower than the SA by 7mm (or 3.5mm if you only look at one half).

What you can do is find out by how much the SA overhangs the top GPU slot and from that we can see how wide a cooler you can have.

Do you currently use Crossfire or is that something you've only considered for the future?
Click to expand...


My current Silver Arrow cooler completely covers the slot making it impossible to use my 2 6950's in crossfire . I am currently using the very bottom x8 slot but the card is a triple slot cooler and isnt sitting in the socket correctly due to the power and hdd light connections
 
PhoenixSP said:
The problem is it covers the first x16 slot on the motherboard as well as requiring low profile ram .
Click to expand...

The PCI-E slot being blocked is a problem with some of Gigabyte's X79 boards rather than the X79 platform itself, I DSR'd an X79-UD3 once because of it - it seems like an amateurish oversight really. Asus' X79 boards (and probably other manufacturers) are all fine afaik.
 
Last edited:
Arcane said:
I ended up with a H100i, not the greatest cooler out there (rubbish software, whining fans etc) but it left loads of space around the CPU socket and didn't cause clearance issues with SLI.
Click to expand...

Really? I've heard good things about the software (and fans once the firmware has been updated!).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom