What was the first CPU cooler you ever bought?

Nelly · 11 Sep 2012 at 23:45

To cool my AMD Athlon XP 1700+ on my Abit's KR7A-RAID around year 2000, I think mine was this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/662/10

TaiSol CGK742092

setter · 12 Sep 2012 at 00:32

Arctic freezer 7 pro, used to cool an E6600. Never used a stock intel cooler before. Just an amd one on an s939 4000.

andy_mk3 · 12 Sep 2012 at 00:41

Arctic Freezer 7 for me too, the very early one, used to cool my old Sempron

BrianB · 12 Sep 2012 at 03:31

Zalman CNPS 3200 ALCU for my 3.2GHz P4.

bremen1874 · 12 Sep 2012 at 04:36

First heatsink with a name, an Alpha P3125 (Slot 1 Pentium). A really serious piece of kit at the time, screaming dual 60mm fans, and even a Peltier for a while. Overclocking was more fun back then, and made more of a tangible difference.

Before that they didn't really have proper names, but would have started with something that wouldn't even cool a modern chipset.

Kaapstad · 12 Sep 2012 at 05:32

The first one I bought was a Noctua I can't remember the model name but it cost £49.99 when I tried to assemble it I had a bit of a disaster. Some of the screws were very tiny and awkward for me (big hands and poor eyesight) that I damaged the threads and I ended up throwing the whole lot in the bin.

Has anyone else had a bad experience like that.

C64 · 12 Sep 2012 at 11:54

Thermaltake volcano and I still have it cooling an old athlon xp rig lol

Tealc · 12 Sep 2012 at 13:18

I don't remember the name but it was a thermal take similar to the volcano above but was a red 38mm fan with a full copper heatsink below. God it was so noisy.

Edit: It was the Thermaltake Venus 12

Awful thing. Swapped it out for a Zalman 7000 within weeks and it's still on the same Socket 754 motherboard quite a few years later.

ZXSpectrum · 12 Sep 2012 at 13:24

Think mine was a Taisol as well.. And after that a thermalright and somewhere in there and... AKASA Silver mountain.. WOW WIth a Delta fan that could make your ears bleed.

lots of different system configs, coolers etc to remember..

SouthEastBlue · 12 Sep 2012 at 13:49

Akasa 965 to overclock my old E5200!

Confused · 12 Sep 2012 at 13:51

I remember that I purchased a Globalwin FOP38, but I may have had a similar Taisol too at around the same time.

pepp77 · 12 Sep 2012 at 13:53

Arctic Freezer 7 Pro on an e8200 was the first for me.

ubersonic · 12 Sep 2012 at 13:53

Some tiny aluminium passive job for Socket 5.

spixelspixel · 12 Sep 2012 at 13:56

Zalman aeroflower for my x2 4600+

bemaniac · 12 Sep 2012 at 14:05

thermaltake beetle is the one i remember best, wasnt quite my first as I'd used stock until then. It was huge and stuck out of my case so I had to leave the side off lol. Looked like a giant ladybug had begun feasting on my cpu.

dacads · 12 Sep 2012 at 14:15

Hyper 212 Evo

valkynaz · 12 Sep 2012 at 14:19

Cooler Master Hyper 612S

.

This beast is massive. Was really shocked when I opened it and seen how big it was compared to the stock Intel CPU cooler.

stuie · 12 Sep 2012 at 14:50

one of these back in the day of the amd bartons

The-Plethora · 12 Sep 2012 at 15:35

Think it was a thermaltake dragon orb

It was actually pretty crap. I then bought another (GlobalWin maybe?) that had a delta fan on it...sweet Jesus...

Amazing how much the size of a simple cooler has grown in recent years.

PowerPie5000 · 12 Sep 2012 at 15:47

Some chunky twin fan thing for my old slot-1 Pentium III 650Mhz years ago (i still have that PC running Win98se, Dos 6.22 and 3DFX Glide for all those old games

).