I'm looking at building a new system and purchasing an intel quad core.

Was just looking for some sudgetions on cooling the beast.

I'm trying to avoid water cooling and go with a fan/heatsink setup but im looking for which one would be best on keeping it cool.

I mainly wana avoid water because it's a hassle when your constanly upgradding and can be messy.

Something simple, and powerful is the objective.

Plug in, connect, go.

Probably not that simple, but if you're going to lay down more then ten C-notes on a processor, that's gotta be the best money can buy. Good luck getting it though, probably in high demand.

For air cooling, I've heard good things about the Thermaltake Typhoon. Might want to give that one a go instead.

Tuniq Tower 120

I second the Tuniq Tower 120. Also the Thermalright Ultra 120 works like a beast especially with two push-pull fans.

tunic tower 120 ftw! i would get a better fan too, a tuniq with one of these is pretty much the best air cooling you can get. now all you have to do is find one.

Yes, the same fan I have. It's very impressive.

Zalman 9700LED
sucka runs my OCed opty cpu at 38C under load
opty 175@2.7
plus it looks great ;p

the tuniq beats the life out of a 9700, so does a scythe infinity, thermaltake big typhoon, scythe ninja, the list goes on and on. its still a pretty decent cooler, but its over priced for what your getting.

The 9500 and 9700 are okay and looks really fancy. But there are many coolers that can outperform it.

If by "beats the life out of" you mean it runs 1-3°C hotter but at substantially lower dbs ;p

and you get a superb quality cooler when you buy a zalman, not some plastic covered gizmo

point out one peice of plastic on the tuniq tower 120!

this are from X-bit, look at the results, the 9700 is beaten by every other cooler comparded.




and the tuniq tower 120 is much better the scythe infinity, scythe ninja, and thermaltake big typhoon, so it beats the 9700 as well. your the idiot, not me.

Going by that chart, the only item on the list that consistently beats out the 9700 is Thermaltake's Big Typhoon. Looks like if I have CPU heating troubles I know where to go.

i still stand by my original statement ;p

also i didnt mean to start a flame war, just trying to point out that it may run a few °C hotter but it is still a fantastic cooler, that runs much quieter than most other aftermarket coolers, and that manages to look great in the process.

I don't see how you can get much quieter than Tower 120/Scythe Ninja-style coolers (provided you use a decent fan), but there you go.

Depending on the fanspeed the zalman is about 15-19db, compared to about 25 for most other coolers (~23 on a thermaltake 120mm fan) with the fan at about 1800rpm mine runs at about 15db, chipset and gpu cooler make more noise (which aint saying much since ive got a DFI NF4 board which have horribly noisy chipset fans)
My cooler is bios controlled, and never goes faster than ~1800, sometimes it turns off completly ;p
and this is running on overclocked opty cpu, idles at about 23~26 depending on ambient room temp, and has yet to go over 40??°C
though it has come close (about 38°C) and we are just in the first month of summer. still the fan goes up to a full 2800rpm, but i think its to noisy then, i have rather high expectations

Also merry christmas to all!