comrad

If you do not know which way in cooling you should go for your cpu then read this.

Water cooling or air cooling?

If you cannot decide which one you need, think of this: a good water cooling system will cost you about 150-300$. DO NOT get the cheap kits. They perform just like air cooling does, sometimes air performs better than those cheap pre built ones. When on the other hand you can get air cooling for your cpu ofr 40-55$.

Remember, no matter what you go with, always use Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound.

What to look for in a heatsink

You have decided to go with air cooling. Ok these are a couple things you wanna look for in a heatsink:

1. Material- Copper is the BEST, aluminum is good but not as good as copper.

2. Size- The size matters alot, a big heatsink is good in one way and bad another. Good- it can hold alot of heat, bad- it weighs alot and might not fit.

3. Brand- Always make sure it is not a generic heatsink, stick to Thermalright, Zalman, Thermaltake, Cooler Master, etc.

4. Socket- Make sure it fits your cpu!

5. Fans- Fans is a matter of taste. Some people like quiet and medium performance fans, some people dont care about sound and only want the BEST performance.

Heatpipe technolgy- This is very good cooling technolgy, Refer to this FAQ for more information Heatpipe Technology

Some good heatsinks are:

Thermaltake:
Tower 112
Sonic Tower
Thermalright:
Thermalright Xp-90
Thermalright Xp-120
Zalman:
7700-cu
7000b-cu
Cooler Master
Hyper 6+

Burn

take the thermaltake beetle off, it's absolutely horrible, and looks like hell...lol.. good FAQ though!

TheCoolGuy

perhaps you could add in a reminder that if air is the way they go...as5 is a MUST

Burn

regardless of whatever cooling you go, you should have AS5...

TheInformationator

You forgot to mention phase change... and if you do go with phase change, you should put diaelectric grease into the socket (to prevent "pin rot" from possible condensation), and use Artic Silver Ceramique for the thermal paste. Ceramique performs better under sub zero temperatures, and does not conduct at all, unlike Arctic Silver 5, which does have some level of conductivity and can risk frying the CPU under rare occaision.

Your two phase change company choices are Asetek (they make the Vapochill series) and Prometia (They make the Mach II). I think the Vapochill LS is far superior to Prometias stuff.

Since when is freezing the crap out of your CPU not fun?

Sun

Hell ya!!!

intelc4004

also add the Arctic Freezer 7 for the LLGA775. GREAT heatsink/fan/heatpipe combo for less than $30 shipped most of the time. Brings temp down 10C. GREAT!!

F-Disk

I can vouch that u will not be disapointed with the hyper 6+

Mark_767

Copper is the second best, they just don't make silver heatsinks.

Man, just imagine an xp-120 that had copper fins, but had a silver base plate and silver heatpipes, and then one of those 200+ cmf fans on it... Could get higher than lots of good watercooling.

Delphi

Add the arctic freezer pro 64 too its a great cooler for money/performance wise

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