what is the cheapest way to cool your cpu for overclock yet effective?

It depends on the particular CPU and how much you want to o/c - i.e. to get the most out of some cpu's you would need to go water cooled, if you're looking at SB processors, generally the cheapest way would be a cheap tower cooler (or the stock cooler can generally get you around 4.5ghz or so)

For budget cooling that can still overclock I would go for a Hyper 212+.

+1 to this.

1.- go full open "bench" style

2.- take your PC outside

3.- overclock at night time ONLY !!

4.- enjoy your new temps


completely FREE

/thread

the enermax ETS T-40 T.B. SILENCE
http://www.overclock.net/t/1227935/212-evo-is-a-ripoff-enermaxs-ets-t-40-t-b-silence-and-why-you-need-to-know-about-it-outperforms-212-evo-for-less

Lower ambiant room temps or increase the mass air flow over the cooler.

If my figurins are right 750 watts will raise 215 cfm of air 10c. My next guess then guess is 115 cfm will rise 20C with the same watts. so givin 80% efficient power supply it will generate 200 watts internally while producing 800 watts for the system. Therefore looking at each component I would say the the power supply it self produces the most heat or maybe that 4870 x2 (320 watts fully loaded) you installed. The biggest heater in my gaming rig is my 7870 150watts fully loaded, then the cpu 130 watts because I like to over clock, followed by mobo 35watts? hard drives and fans 15 watts? some thing must off because gigabyte says 500 watt is as small as u should go with one 7870. when i was running 2 hd 6770s (250 watts) the exhaust out of the 750 watt power supply would increase to 38-39C with 23C ambient. of couse the power supply had to deal with the heat from the cpu, video card and the chipset. Any thing you water cool moves the heat load out side the case without heating the air inside. I built my 1st and only water cooler for a just released 4000+ overclocked amd cpu. My female complained when I came home that my computer was making this horrble beepin noise so she just unplugged it when she was done. She figured nothing was wrong because it kept working. Thats when I figured it was cheaper to just byu her a laptop. since I have not givin up females I figured it was best to give up water cooling.

Short answer. wait for winter and turn the heat down, or get bigger fans and more CFM.
expensive solution turn AC to 20C
note this not possible if your spousal unit objects. thats why I went water cooling in the 1st place