cooler for Pentium 4 540

[valeriana]

I have a 2 year old Dell 8400 with a 3.2GHz P 4 540. Intel 925X/XE based motherboard, Socket T (775). Everything's running fine, but the stock CPU fan gets extremely loud under load. For example, when I'm running the grid.org client, which keeps it at 100% usage.

I'm looking for suggestions for a good quality, reliable CPU cooler to replace the stock one with that will cool this toaster (aka Prescott) more quietly. I'm not looking for the cheapest one nor the most expensive cooler. I'm not looking to OC it to 4GHz. I'm not even sure Dell built it in such a way as to allow it to be OC'd. I'd be interested to know if I could OC it, but that's a separate discussion. The cooler should be something widely available, e.g., on Newegg or TigerDirect. (Turns out that TigerDirect actually has brick and mortar stores, and that I live near them. Who knew?)

Also, there's a large air flow guard that guides the air from the CPU out the back of the case, so any replacement cooler would have to be compatible with that.

A closely related question, is there a freeware tool that will report my CPU temp?

Thanks.

 

[valeriana]

No one has any coolers to recommend? Come on people, I see you talking about this Thermaltake and that Zalman all the time! No can recommend a good, quiet aftermarket cooler for a Prescott?

 

[redwing]

If you're space restrained, I recommend some of the less efficient Scythe heatsinks (the katana, or the samurai (2) ).

http://www.xpcgear.com/p4775cooler.html

I found that xpcgear has these coolers at reasonable prices, especially when on sale. Zalman is a good brand, but you're paying extra for the name ... we're past the point where Zalman was the undesputable king of silent computing.

I dont risk recommending any particular heatsink, but most of the coolers on that page should fit the "quiet" requirement, albet be prepared to see higher temps if you run them at lower voltage/fan speed settings.

Cheers

 

[randomcow]

I've worked with that model of Dell before and they don't use standard heatsink mounts. That is, the motherboard does not have holes that match standard LGA775 heatsink mounting.

The holes look like they *might* fit a Xeon heatsink though if you want look into that but I certainly don't guarantee that it will fit since a lot of Dell parts are proprietary.

 

[valeriana]

You're joking! Dell didn't even put the standard heatsink mounts around the CPU socket on the motherboard? That's rediculous. Maybe I'll give them a call... if I decide I have three hours to waste sometime.