Spec me a cooler

gropingmantis · 30 Mar 2011 at 17:07

I wasn't getting much love on the SFF board so I thought I'd cross post in here as well hopefully someone will have some valuable input.

My Q06 is on its way to me as we speak. This means I can fit whatever cooler I damn well please...almost. Because nobody has seen a P67 ITX board and the likely contenders for one are Gigabyte, who love to put their socket as close to the PCI-e lane as possible (nice one Gigabyte), we have to assume that whatever cooler I choose has to fit on a board with that kind of socket placement.

So I've narrowed it down to 2 coolers:

Thermalright HR-02. This will sit like a hulk on top of the board looking massive and cooling the CPU very well...but nothing else.

OR

Thermalright AXP-140, which will blow top down, not as good CPU cooling but it will be cooling the other components which people have hinted at being important if you want to OC on an ITX board.

Any thoughts on these two or suggestions for other coolers that will fit silly socket placement?
Has anyone used either of the above?
People have been saying that the new SB CPUs don't need as much cooling but to what extent is this true. I want to be able to get a decent OC on my i5 once the P67/Z68 ITX boards come out.

gropingmantis · 30 Mar 2011 at 17:30

Or the Noctua NH-U9B-SE3 if anyone has any experience of that??

chipps101 · 30 Mar 2011 at 18:01

try having a look at the coolermaster hyper tx3, it is a very small and decent performing cooler and hardly breaks out the footprint of the socket.

i'm using one on my striker extreme and it doesn't encroach on the heatpipes that asus decided to surround the cpu with so should not foul the pci-e slot even if it is fairly close to the cpu socket.

Helios1234 · 30 Mar 2011 at 18:59

Perhaps a Noctua NH-C14.

chipps101 · 30 Mar 2011 at 19:34

i take it you mean for a board with this kind of layout op ?

i'm not sure the noctua would fit on that and leave the pcie slot usable but Helios1234 would know as he has reviewed it i think ?

gropingmantis · 30 Mar 2011 at 20:03

^^ yes that kind of layout. The C14 doesn't fit, which is a shame as if it did that would be my cooler of choice.

Helios1234 · 30 Mar 2011 at 20:53

chipps101 said:
i take it you mean for a board with this kind of layout op ?

i'm not sure the noctua would fit on that and leave the pcie slot usable but Helios1234 would know as he has reviewed it i think ?

Hmm yeah, I don't think the Noctua would fit on there without blocking the PCIe slot.

gropingmantis · 30 Mar 2011 at 21:05

The real question is on the PC-Q06 (which is a test bench and thus has no case airflow as such) should I go for a top down cooler or a tower cooler?
Is the lesser CPU cooling of top down coolers offset by the chipset cooling or should I not worry about chipset cooling and cool the CPU as much as possible?

...basically

Helios1234 · 30 Mar 2011 at 21:21

Generally you don't need a lot of chipset cooling and a tower cooler is more effective in cooling the CPU. I mentioned the NH-C14 because it is very impressive and would have given you the best of both worlds. If you can fit a narrow tower heatsink and orientate it to face away from the PCIe slot, that will work well. But then you'd have to make sure your memory will fit fine underneath it.

The Thermalright VX or Archon are fairly narrow.

gropingmantis · 30 Mar 2011 at 21:44

Thanks. Yes the trouble is that the socket is also close to the RAM so I am not sure the Archon will fit. The advantage of the HR-02 is that its heat pipes all rise vertically at the same distance from the base of the cooler and are fairly close to the base so there is no issue with the RAM. In your review however you say its not a great value cooler.
The diagrams and measurements on the Thermalright website are better than most other company's but they still don't really show enough information to be able to see whether the Archon will clear the RAM.

Gigabyte's socket placement really limits your choices. Either way I may wait for them to bring the board out before buying as for a P67 board they may see the error in their ways and have a placement similar to my current foxconn which would allow for a silver arrow or D14...which would be very nice.

chipps101 · 30 Mar 2011 at 22:13

how high are you hoping to overclock your chip ?

gropingmantis · 30 Mar 2011 at 22:31

Well people have been getting up to 4.8GHz 24/7 but on an ITX board I'd be more than happy with 4.4/4.5GHz.

chipps101 · 30 Mar 2011 at 23:22

maybe something like a zalman cnps9900 would fit and not have ram clearance issues and should handle that overclock.

Helios1234 · 31 Mar 2011 at 14:32

gropingmantis said:
Thanks. Yes the trouble is that the socket is also close to the RAM so I am not sure the Archon will fit. The advantage of the HR-02 is that its heat pipes all rise vertically at the same distance from the base of the cooler and are fairly close to the base so there is no issue with the RAM. In your review however you say its not a great value cooler.
The diagrams and measurements on the Thermalright website are better than most other company's but they still don't really show enough information to be able to see whether the Archon will clear the RAM.

Gigabyte's socket placement really limits your choices. Either way I may wait for them to bring the board out before buying as for a P67 board they may see the error in their ways and have a placement similar to my current foxconn which would allow for a silver arrow or D14...which would be very nice.

What memory are you using? The HR-02 might be ideal in this situation. It's quite expensive for what it is compared to some other coolers but that's when using a more traditional case and ATX motherboard. In this situation, it will be better suited for your needs but the only problem is that it doesn't come with a fan.

gropingmantis · 31 Mar 2011 at 15:13

Just good old XMS3 so no silly heat spreaders to worry about. Not having a fan isn't an issue as I have a Noctua P12 and S12 spare. The HR-02 seems to be the one I am moving towards as in most reviews it comes out as one of the best coolers that will actually fit on these damned boards, even though it is £55...