Out of date on coolers...advice sought.

[Angilion]

My rev 1 EVO 120 appears to have been overcome by my A64 X2. Heatpipes too small to shift enough heat up to the fins, I think. It performs very well within its limits, but an X2 is past its limits. So, I need a new cooler and I haven't been looking at them for a couple of years.

Looking around, I'm currently leaning towards a Tuniq tower, It isn't too expensive, seems to do very well in tests and doesn't need a lot of clearance. On S939, does it use a K8 backplate or the standard retention mechanism? I'm hoping for the backplate, as I have one on and I don't want to bother taking my motherboard out to remove it and refit the retention mechanism (if I can find it).

I'm using an Asrock 939 Dual SATA 2 board, so whatever I buy needs to fit on that.

 

[PeteLucky7]

What sort of budget mate and will you be looking at switching to intel at all soon?

 

[Angilion]

What sort of budget mate and will you be looking at switching to intel at all soon?

£40, tops. I paid £35 for my last cooler and that was enough for two years - worked out at about a quid fifty a month, not so bad. Still a good cooler within its limits. My overclocked (25%) single core A64 never went over 40C. I'm not looking to spend money, though. If there's a cooler nearly as good for half the price (well, we can all wish), I'll buy the cheaper one. My board will probably limit me to a 25% overclock anyway. I have an urge to get some RAM heatsinks (the ones with thermal adhesive backing) and stick them on every part of the motherboard that gets even slightly warm

I'll be looking at switching to Intel, obviously for Core 2, but I probably won't spend another few hundred quid on a toy that won't really give me anything more than the toy I already have (once I can cool the X2 effectively enough). It will probably be memory that spurs my move - my board takes DDR and I probably won't buy more DDR knowing that it will be useless for my next upgrade. So when 1GB isn't enough any more, I'll probably upgrade then. Probably to Intel, but maybe AMD will pull out a surprise CPU by then.