E6400 - will the bundled cooler do?

aurelius

aurelius

aurelius

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If I'm unlikely to attempt any serious overclocking, do I need to buy a processor cooler or should the fan included with a retail Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 be adequate please?

Stability and quietness are the priorities.

If I were to get an OEM processor (i.e. without a fan), what might be a sensible choice for a quiet but affordable cooler?

The specification will probably be as follows (unless anyone has any better ideas):

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Asus P5B Deluxe
Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4
Sapphire RADEON X1950PRO (or Sapphire ATI Radeon X1300PRO - I only play games occasionally)
Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT
2 x 500MB Seagate 7200.10
Samsung SH-S183A
Antec Solo
Seasonic S12-430
Windows XP Media Center Edition (to be replaced by Windows Vista Home Premium)
 
Intel designed the cooler to cool that chip fine at stock.....

Any retail cooler is always good enough as long as your not overclocking....
 
i've just built a 6400 core 2 duo system, that i'm running at stock speeds (at the moment) with the retail heatsink and fan, BTW which is suprisingly quiet.

my question is: after burning in with prime 95, are load temps of 55c (28c over ambient) normal/ok for that CPU?

i know should have scraped off the generic gunk paste, and put some arctic silver on at least, but if i'm going to take the heatsink off anyway, what heatsink and fan would you reccomend that's not too big?
 
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Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 775)

HS-017-AR_400.jpg


£16.44 inc VAT here

Leave the stock fan in the box and slap on the Arctic, for the money it looks like a bargain!
 
i like it! looks good! :D

what about the northbridge cooling? will that still pass air over the northbridge and board? or should i change the northbridge heatsink for a similar vertical heatpipe type?
and aim the CPU cooler over that?

HS-026-TR_200.jpg
 
Thanks very much for all the advice. I've decided to go for the Freezer 7 Pro (it's very quiet and I'll have scope for experimenting with overclocking if necessary).

There's a review that suggests the accompanying thermal paste is 'pants' but I found the figures at Artic Cooling's web site very persuasive and will stick with the MX-1.
 
If your not planning to be overclocking a large amount, then C4 ram is really not needed and C5 would be more than sufficient but also leaves you enough headroom for overclocking if you wish to do so in the future but it would be common sense to buy a decent cpu cooler with the extra funds - i would consider looking at the gskill C5 and C4 modules arguably just as good and cheaper than corsair.
 
im currently overcloking my e6400 @3.2ghz with stock cpu cooler and its fine. Load temps never reach over 55c, although I did apply some ocz pure silver paste. :p
 
i hope that load is the peak temp seen using Orthos Blend, and measured using either TAT or Core Temp, seems a little low
 
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