Good cooler for I7-920 OC

I'm using this one:

Product | Thermalright Ultimate CPU Cooling Solutions! USA

(Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme.) They don't list its real height, but it appears to be less than 170mm above the plane of the motherboard, mounted in place.

I run an I7-920 (original stepping; what was, that, C?) at 3.8 GHz. I don't recall what temperatures I've gotten. I pretty much stopped paying attention to CPU temperature in the absence of any lockups.

I generally keep my house below 26C in the Northern Hemisphere summer, though.

bobkn said:

I'm using this one:

Product | Thermalright Ultimate CPU Cooling Solutions! USA

(Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme.) They don't list its real height, but it appears to be less than 170mm above the plane of the motherboard, mounted in place.

I run an I7-920 (original stepping; what was, that, C?) at 3.8 GHz. I don't recall what temperatures I've gotten. I pretty much stopped paying attention to CPU temperature in the absence of any lockups.

I generally keep my house below 26C in the Northern Hemisphere summer, though.

The height is 159mm. My case is 160mm from top of CPU to inside of side panel. Test show that the HS can maintain a temp of about 18 degrees over ambient under moderate load, which would put my temp at 48 degrees. That's good.

It produces around 45DbA of noise, which is moderately quiet, but louder than the fans I have now.

How do I identify my chip's stepping?

Keeping my house below 30 degrees on a hot day is not easy. There is no cooling to speak of, and electricity prices have skyrocketed in Australia - Increased over 250% in the last two years. My average bill is $325 per month, so running lots of fans is not affordable

The most recent comparison of coolers that I can find that compares more than a doen coolers is 18 months old. Anyone know of a recent comparison (Toms hardware cooler comparison is 10 years old)?

linnemeyerhere said:

Tanyan,
If you need air volume with low noise then may I suggest slowly or all at once if you can afford it, replace you fans with Noctua's or similar premium fans. Yes add the front mounted case fan ASAP and then look into the Antec spot fan I have one and like it a lot. Air flow through the cpu cooler should be clear and clean so if you have a card up against or even near the intake then flow will be compromised. If this is the case then orient the intake to another direction either low to high or front to rear.

Since i rotated the HS front to back yesterday there is more space between MCH and HS than there was before. Unfortunately rotating it didn't reduce my temp.

I am going to visit my local computer shop today to get a new 2TB drive for my server, so I'll see what fans and coolers they have..

[QUOTE=A Guy;1174323]

Tanyam said:

I have to say, your cooler should be performing much better than it is.

A Guy

Yes, that seems to be the general consensus. It seems to be working hard. And since it only has 3 pins, the speed management function don't work, so it's flat out or stopped

I've purchased some Zalman quiet fans for the front of the cases - 120mm. I'll install that and see what happens, though with the 4 I have now, it is already quite noisy.

thanks

Tanyam said:

bobkn said:

I'm using this one:

Product | Thermalright Ultimate CPU Cooling Solutions! USA

(Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme.) They don't list its real height, but it appears to be less than 170mm above the plane of the motherboard, mounted in place.

I run an I7-920 (original stepping; what was, that, C?) at 3.8 GHz. I don't recall what temperatures I've gotten. I pretty much stopped paying attention to CPU temperature in the absence of any lockups.

I generally keep my house below 26C in the Northern Hemisphere summer, though.

The height is 159mm. My case is 160mm from top of CPU to inside of side panel. Test show that the HS can maintain a temp of about 18 degrees over ambient under moderate load, which would put my temp at 48 degrees. That's good.

It produces around 45DbA of noise, which is moderately quiet, but louder than the fans I have now.

How do I identify my chip's stepping?

Keeping my house below 30 degrees on a hot day is not easy. There is no cooling to speak of, and electricity prices have skyrocketed in Australia - Increased over 250% in the last two years. My average bill is $325 per month, so running lots of fans is not affordable

The most recent comparison of coolers that I can find that compares more than a doen coolers is 18 months old. Anyone know of a recent comparison (Toms hardware cooler comparison is 10 years old)?

My estimate of the height of the Ultra was above the mainboard, not the CPU heat spreader. It's probably still too tall for your case, though. There are designs other than towers. For example:

Noctua.at - sound-optimised premium components "Designed in Austria"!

(Expensive, though.)

Stepping? CPU-Z can tell you, or you can look it up if you have the CPU's Intel S-Spec (on the box, or on the CPU itself):

http://download.intel.com/design/pro...pdt/320836.pdf

For example: My S-Spec is SLBCH, so my stepping is C0.

Your electric bill averages 325AUD? And I thought that power was expensive here in Connecticut, USA.

I'm not sure what to suggest. My case is a Cooler Master Stacker 830. It seems to give decent cooling, but it's a full tower. It's all-aluminum, so it's not unusually heavy, but it takes up a great deal of space.