FX6300 aftermarket cooler

OperationIvy

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Sep 30, 2013
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10,510
I am thinking of getting an aftermarket cooler for my FX6300. I narrowed down to Hyper 212 EVO (no surprise there huh) and Arctic Cooling A30. I can get both for the exact same price. My question is which one is better when you look at cooling performance,quietness and thermal paste which comes with the cooler. A lot of people said to buy the EVO, but i saw some test where A30 is better(not much, but still).
 
Solution
I own an A30 Freezer, which I nabbed for $30 bucks, and overall I like it and don't regret my purchase at all. There are a lot of places where Arctic tries to get the full $50 dollars asking price out of it, and I think that is a bit much considering that it doesn't have a universal mounting solution and only allows for one fan. Since you can get it for roughly the same price as the EVO, that definitely makes it a tough decision, a lot of reviews have them trading blows - although there is one on here that shows the EVO as a better performer for extreme overclocking. (Although the A30 still managed to cope with 300 watts they were pulling for the processor!)

The A30 Freezer is going to be more quiet with its stock fan, and comes...
I own an A30 Freezer, which I nabbed for $30 bucks, and overall I like it and don't regret my purchase at all. There are a lot of places where Arctic tries to get the full $50 dollars asking price out of it, and I think that is a bit much considering that it doesn't have a universal mounting solution and only allows for one fan. Since you can get it for roughly the same price as the EVO, that definitely makes it a tough decision, a lot of reviews have them trading blows - although there is one on here that shows the EVO as a better performer for extreme overclocking. (Although the A30 still managed to cope with 300 watts they were pulling for the processor!)

The A30 Freezer is going to be more quiet with its stock fan, and comes with better thermal paste. That much is for sure. The mounting solution is utilizes the stock AMD backplace, which I don't really care for but still is fairly solid, and you can mount it in any of the four directions. If mounted the tradition way, with the fan exhausting towards the rear of the case, the cowl for the fan will block pretty much any RAM with any heatspreader that is in the first DIMM slot. Seriously, even RAM without heatspeaders is a tight fit.

The EVO has a mounting solution that people either like or hate. For positives I heard a lot of people talk about how it offers good mounting pressure and has safeguards against screwing it down too tight to bend the motherboard too much, and I have heard people say the exact opposite, in addition to saying how they hate when they touch the mounted cooler in the least bit, the nudge can mis-align the cooler. (The cooler is not held in a completely static direction by the mounting mechanism.) I have also heard that the stock fan, which is overall good both in terms of the air it moves and its level of quietness, can be prone to failure - the curse of being made with a "primitive" sleeve bearing. Failure rate aside, the stock fan is almost too good: I have both heard and seen people gain zero performance from using a second fan. Good for out-of-the-box performance, bad for having the ability to add a second fan. As for RAM compatibility, you have the option of moving the fan up or down to have some leeway for somewhat tall ram, like G.Skill Ripjaws X, but for optimum performance you'll have to use RAM with low-profile heat spreaders if you expect to use that first DIMM slot.

As an end-note, I would like to see a review where, in a comparison with the two cooling solutions, they take the fans and swap them, just for funzies and to see what the results are. Anyway, I hope I listed enough pros and cons of each to help you decide more of what might be best for you.
 
Solution

OperationIvy

Honorable
Sep 30, 2013
20
0
10,510
Thanks man you answered almost all my questions. I will probably be using G.Skill Sniper RAM in the second and fourth slot on my MOBO (M5A97 EVO R2.0) so it should`t be blocking it (in the 2nd slot) ?
 
With both coolers, having the RAM in the second and fourth slot shouldn't be an issue.

I do believe that, if you mount the A30 Freezer so that the fan exhausts towards the top, that the RAM clearance issue becomes null. I don't know for sure, though.