Good Air Cooler for my Phenom II 965 140w?

[slickg]

I am looking for a good air cooler for my Phenom II 965 140w. I'm currently running the stock cooler with Arctic Silver 5 and it hits about 52 degrees during an hour of Left 4 Dead 2 but under Prime 95 it got to about 60 degrees. I have undervolted the chip and it runs stable at 1.375 volts so that did drop the temps down to about 58/59 in Prime95. I'm not currently overclocking either this is at stock. It idles at about 28/29 with the voltage down. I'm also doing this in an Antec 900 case with the fans cranked to the max. I'm also wondering if it could be the board giving bad temps for the CPU as the core is showing only about 56/57 max.

First off, should I be worried about these temps much or am I in the right ballpark stock? I know that the chip's max temp is 62 degrees so when I saw the 60 after hours of Prime I got a little worried.

I would eventually like to do a small Overclock in the future so I am looking for good recommendations on a good air heatsink and fan that doesn't cost copius amounts of money. Are there any out there that don't require you to take the motherboard back out of the case as I spent a lot of time running the cables for this messy Power Supply! Also I noticed that the memory sits very close to the processor on this particular board so I want to make sure whichever one will fit next to 4 sticks of RAM. Here is my Rig:

[AMD 965 Black Edition 140w][Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P Motherboard]
[XFX 4890 1 GB][Seagate 1.5 TB Hard Drive]
[8 GB (4x2GB) G.Skill 1600 DDR3] [Corsair 750TX 750w PSU]
[Antec 900 Case]

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

Here's some suggestions in price range:

$35 - Scythe Mugen 2. Nothing is as good at this price range.
$65 - Megahalem.
$77 - Corsair H50. It's really a water cooler, but it performs and is priced like higher end air coolers.

There's tons of others, but those are the note worthies in scale. I wouldn't even bother putting something better than stock on the CPU under the Mugen 2. The Mugen 2 really is the best value here. It's inexpensive and it drops your temps tremendously. The Megahalem is a bit better, so extreme overclockers flock to it. But it's not so much better than you might think it worth being twice the price, because the difference is only a few degree's.

So I would suggest the Mugen 2. Nothing else out there beats it that costs $35, or even $40 for that matter. It sits high enough that it should be ok next to ram, unless your ram has raised heat fins or something.

I use the Mugen2 with my 955 at 3.8Ghz. Temps idle in the 26c area, but at load, it stays under 55c, and that's the sweet spot.

Very best,

 

[Stefan Payne]

Isn't the Scythe Kabuto available??

 

[bloodugly]

ThermoLab Baram is around 40 bucks online, but you'll need to add a fan to it since it doesn't come with one. Frostytech reviewed it a little while back.

http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2346&page=5

 

[thefreeaccount]

Cooler Master Hyper 212 ($30) - it's relatively small and light, so there are fewer case/mobo fitting issues than any of the mentioned heatsinks except the Scythe Kabuto.

Outperforms most of them:
http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2206&page=5
http://www.frostytech.com/top5heatsinks.cfm


Also worth mentioning is the Cooler Master Gemini II ($40). Like the Kabuto, you're sure to find a usable orientation, even on a very cramped motherboard.
http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2288&page=5

 

[slickg]

I'm really liking that Hyper 212 thanks for the suggestion. I'm probably going to get an extra 120mm fan along with it too that should keep things nice and cool! Thanks for the suggestions guys!

 

[slickg]

I actually ended up going with a CoolerMaster Hyper TX3 which was readily available at CompUSA (Tiger Direct Store) for 19.99. I also picked up an extra 92mm fan and attached it on the other side of the heatsink. In Prime95 I am currently hitting only 48 degrees max as opposed to 61 that I hit with the stock HSF. Also, it came with a clip that I was able to install it without removing the motherboard which was a huge plus as I just built this thing the other day . The design seems similar to the 212 but instead of 120mm it's got 92mm fans. So far, so good.