Cooling an overclocked Opteron 165

[gis_mapper]

I'm getting my Opteron 165 in a few days and plan to overclock it on a MSI K8N Diamond Plus motherboard mounted in a CoolerMaster Pretorian 732 case.

Is the supplied Opetron heatsink / fan combnation enough, or should I look into a third party solution? If so, which one?

In another post, someone mentioned they use the Thermalright S1-120 cooler ....

 

[StigHelmer]

The Opterons usually run cooler than their a64 counterparts, even when overclocked, so the stock hsf SHOULD be enough for a slight overclock. Ofcourse, if you want to take full advantage of the chip, a better cooling solution is required. Good ones are the SI-120 you mentioned, scythe ninja, and the TT big typhoon. you need a good quality fan for the two first, eq a silverstone FM121.

A good and inexpensive solution is the TT BigWater SE, but not everyone wants anything to do with water inside their computers..

 

[teh_squaterer]

If you use thermal paste, the stock heatsink will work good for a pretty big overclock.

 

[bagg]

My 165 has been happily running at 2.63 using the stock HSF for 4 months now without any problems whatsoever.

 

[StigHelmer]

I know the stock cooler can be used to overclock a lot, but why just not buy a quieter and more efficient heatsink, that will allow you to overclock higher? Now, if you only do a modest overclock (~2.5-2.6 on a opteron), sure, the stock HSF should be sufficient. Btw, how loud is you're HSF at full load?

 

[bagg]

The stock HSF is pretty quiet. It isn't a regular HSF like the AMD64 procs come with, it's a rather large heat pipe design which isn't all that different from an aftermarket heatsink. I seriously doubt I could get this chip stable any higher than it is without liquid anyways, which to me is a little overkill for my needs. I'm happy with the 800+ Mhz OC and think buying a liquid setup for another 100-200Mhz would be a waste.