CPU Cooler (Phenom II 965)

darrencook

darrencook

darrencook

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Joined
13 Jan 2010
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50
Hey i'm looking for a new cpu cooler for my phenom II 965.

The standard heatsink isn't really cutting it for this build, and i have all 4 dimms full of ram with heat sinks so the cooler cannot go over them unless its on the high clearance side..

Any ideas of a good HS? don't fancy water cooling though.

Thanks.
 
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Was looking at more of a heatsink/fan combo than a sealed water cooling kit.

The reason behind avoiding watercooling is i know i would start wanting to cool everything. and then it gets bloody pricey....
 
In this heat I'm getting close to 60c after playing bioshock 2 for an hour or so. That's with 1.5v 3.7ghz phenom ii 940

Idle is quite hot due to the ambient temps. At 50c

On a normal uk day it sits at 35c idle and 54c load 1.5v
 
I am using a Thermolab Baram on my 965, which is a bloody good cooler. Using just one 120mm fan on it and I have just enough room to fill all four slots on an Asus M4A79XTD-Evo board if I wanted to. No longer using that board though.

The cooler is awesome, can take 2 120mm fans in push pull but I felt it was unnecessary.

I am sorting the fans on my Antec 300 case and have disabled the front two 120mm intakes for now. All I have in the case is the 120m on the Baram and the two case exhausts. CPU idling at 28c! And its bloody warm in here too with the nice weather so happy days!

To be honest if you're not planning to oc much you could possibly use it as a passive hs if you had good in/out on the case.........

On a side note I ran the stock hs initially and I was getting like 50 idle and 70+ load hence the swift change of hs.
 
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i have fitted a ultra 120 today and very happy with it.
cools very well, but not had time to really test it long time yet.
fits perfect and still allowing for all ram slots to be used
and also allows for the cooler to be pushing air out the rear exhaust instead of facing upwards like most amd coolers do.
looks nice with the viper attached to it aswell.
about the same price as the baram i think.
 
To be honest with the 965 its a bit of a non issue which heatsink you chose. All will cope fine with a 125watt heatload, I went from a zalman 9500 to a lapped and pressure modded TRUE on mx3, and there wasnt a vast difference.

I can reccommend the TRUE if you can be hassled lapping it and pressure modding it, it will cost about a tenner, bringing the total to 40, but it will perform with the big boys. However it will only fit on one way so you will need low profile ramsinks. My gskill ripjaw would just fit under it but I would need to uninstall the heatsink to put the ram in the slots.

All said and done you have the luxury of being able to put budget/looks/preference on a similar footing to performance.
 
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