Vote the cooler YOU would choose for heavy OC!!

Everyone that wants to post comments is welcomed but it isn't required.  

You left off the Tuniq Tower 120 which IMHO is the best of them all.

Yeah, probably in my opinion too but i live in Greece and two friends i have contact with from both France and Germany we can find it nowhere. So i'm going for the second best.   Come on these are good too!  

http://www.plaisio.gr/product.aspx?catalog=1&category=2...

It depends on you case, if youve got a hole on the side for fresh air, I vote the Thermalright si-128

Put two fans on that Ultra 120 and you got one cool running cpu.  

The Scythe can also use two 120mm fans so what about then? Thank for the comments so far!

Well base on the reviews I have read, it only uses the stock fans. Both Ultra 120 and Infinity are great coolers and would probably have similar performance when using 2 fans. If you can buy and test out both coolers, I'd say do that. Then return the less performing cooler or the one you don't like. If that's possible.

Meh, you can mod it to use a second fan yourself within minutes. Btw i haven't consider the buy-test-return trick! Well i would prefer some user experiences though because i have already a tight budget to experiment with...  

si-128 also not a bad cooler...a blowdown cooler that will cool cpu + chipset + ram + cpu surroundings...go for ultra 120 if your case supports its 16cm height...

Now OK people we have some SERIOUS NEWS around the cooling neighborhood!!  

To begin with, ASUS brings a BEAST of a heatsink in the market soon! See this damn thing! From what i saw in some freeking Jap forums it is supposed to be Tuniq Tower KILLER!!


http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=1&model=14...

Even further i found some socking info about the much criticized Zalman 9700 LED! I don't know if we can trust these sites but they look pretty credible!

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/asus-s...
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hardware/gehaeuse_ku...

OMG! The 9700 beat BOTH the Infinity and Ultra 120! Well that's something new! It was in par with Infinity even when the last used TWO fans!! 8O

I am impressed! I want comments. I want users opinions. Stop me because i'll definatly take 9700 and start suggesting it all over!  
God that's to much to take at once, i hope taco, Ninja and others i'll pm will add some light in all this. 8)

Scythe Infinity has my vote. Both for excellent cooling and rugged good looks...

heard good things about the other two, but ill go for the zalman because I have it and it gave me the best results ever.

Hmm. Now heres the important question. Whats the price of all three coolers on Newegg? Now compare that to the scores each received. Tell me then what the price to performance ratio is. Always remember that. If the Zalman wins, this will be good for its standing among OC'ers. If not...

Hey slim nice to see you around!  

About the 9700, did you try to overclock your 6600 with it? It would be great to tell us some real temps about the thing!

Great thought but i hate to tell you that in euros the prices here in Greece are:

Infinity= 50e

Ultra 120= 49e

9700= 52e


So that wasn't very helpful. 8O

Now what were the overall scores? You gotta see this thru man.

true, but still, with less votes and a higher price, the zalman seems to be kinda losing, but they have improved a lot on the pricing, used to be $80 on launch compared to $50 for the others
current newegg pricing
zalman 9700:7votes, $60 with rebate ($70 for nt version)
scythe infinity:12 votes, $57 without rebate, price could go lower
Thermalright ultra 120:10 votes, $47 without rebate, price could go lower
Tuniq Tower:not included, but highly sought after, $60 without rebate (used to be less)

So looking at this, you see that on the current newegg pricing, the thermalright is the cheapest, and has the 2nd most votes, making that the best value of the crop, the infinity, cheaper than the zalman and with more votes, comes in second, and zalman with least votes and highest price comes in last

Any questiosn?


And in case if people were wondering on the performance, here's a site that shows it loosing in dba and performance to the cheaper thermalright
http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=204...

OK don't laugh! lol  


I think that for every euro you pay you get:


1.134c for 9700

1.240c for Infinity

1.346c for Ultra 120.

Lower the better of course! These results are with the prices of plaisio.gr and e-shop.gr i buy from. If newegg has different prices that's not valid. So what we thru this? Zalman is the best? I can't accept it that easy, especially when taco isn't around. :?

Look up for Taco's

Ah so you're here! Well i'm not using neweggs pricing since i'm not shopping from there. From what i see, despite the votes, prices change all the time and maybe 9700 is good today here in Greece but maybe tomorrow sucks because you guys can take it for 30$ there in US. So let's ditch the price factor as i don't think that 10$ of price difference up and down can drop a good cooler. That's the polls purpose, people vote what they know from personal experience is best or what they know is best. It's not a price/performance chart.

No comments on Asus V60 and for the sudden performance leap of 9700?

I suggest the Thermalright cooler. Thermalrights are always solidly built, and allow you the choice of your own fan. Thus, you can choose a very high CFM (or maybe Cubic Meters/Min where you live   ) to cool your CPU better.

Make sure that you have room for this cooler....its effing HUGE!

No, take a look at that review I showed, according to that, the thermalright outperforms the zalman in cooling and quietness, take a look at that and then tell me a more expensive cpu is better :?

Thanks for the advice!!  

Yeah i've seen this review before but i don't know what fan they used on the Ultra. Also they don't use real processors like the revs i posted. I don't know who to trust know!   If we accept both as valid but under different conditions (which is more likely) then we know for sure that 9700 beats the Scythe one. The Scythe has a standard fan so there is no really excuse for it losing in two reviews by 9700.

Yes, you should take into consideration how flexible the 120 is in terms of performance and quietness. The thing I really have against my 9500 is the crappy fan on it, its noisy, has low cfm, and can't properly cool my dual core. So with the thermalright, if you have something like a movie theater box, then you can put in a scythe s-flex with 8dba, or for a monster oc build on air, you'd put in something like one of thermaltake's 120cfm+ fans. So it can be customized to your liking, and that has it's own value (besides the performance)

Plus, popularity is shifting towards the infinity, but here's how you should look at the review. We know that cpus have rated tdps (not that they really mean much, but they give you an estimate). So say for a cpu rated for 89w, but actually produces something like 300w if it's oc'd a lot, then you should think that if the thermalright performed such and such at a 125, find the scale factor and multiply the temp by the same amount to keep the ratios consistant. That will give you an idea of how hot the cpus will run with the thermalright and the zalman

I like love my 9700.
Keeps my E6600 @ 3.24GHz cool with out making a wisper.
Under 100% load on bouth cores with the fan turned all the way down I top out @ 56C.
With the fan all the way up it drops to 53C.
Iddles ~33-35C.

The biggest down side I hear of is the price.
Looks like that dosen't matter were you are at, so it seems like a good choice.

BTW it looks sweet compared to the rest :wink:

Yeah it's probably the best shot. The Infinity and Ultra with two fans are able to beat it but then again the cost of the extra fans makes the 9700 far more attractive in performance/value. People seem to prefer the Infinity though which makes me skeptical. I'll let some more time for people to vote and keep searching until the last day though!

40 votes so far!   With only ONE vote ahead of the Ultra 120 the Infinity seems to be the winner so far! Can the 9700 keep up?! 8O This is turning into a deathmatch!! :twisted:

Keep Voting people!!  

Yeah. People generally view the 9700 as too expensive for the level of performance it provides. It should be continuously outperforming the Infinity and the 120 for the $10 - 20 price premium.

This is good advice. I've had good luck even with one quiet fan. Right now I have a Noctua NF-S12 on my Ultra 120 and at 600 RPM it is very quiet and is keeping my OC'ed 4400+ very cool, basically equal to a Zalman 9500 on high fan. I am going to check out more of the Noctua line.

Anyway, I only have a little experience with 2 fans on the Ultra 120 and there's no doubt that you can drop at least a couple of degrees. It will be getting up to the size range of a Tuniq at that point. Speaking of the Tuniq, I put my second Tuniq on an Opteron 170 at 2.7GHz and it's only 1C (at best) cooler than the first Tuniq I bought that I suspected might be a lemon. I'll have to swap it over to the 4400+ and compare it to the Ultra 120 with 1 and 2 fans since the 4400+ runs a little hotter than the Opty. The bottom line is that the Zalman 9700 on my two boxes is holding it's own against all of the above. At idle, it's running slightly higher than the Ultra and the Tuniq. Running dual prime, the 9700 is running equal to or 1C cooler than the rest, but it's also louder. Not being able to swap fans easily is the major downside to the 9700. If you can get a good price on it and the noise doesn't bother you, it's a great option because it's smaller, lighter and easier to install than the others.

You have to ask yourself what the votes are based on though. Meaning, how many of the voters have actually compared the Infinity to the 9700 to any of these others on their rig? I cut my time short on the Infinity because it wasn't outperforming my NinjaPlus by more than 1C. I'll have to try a different fan or two on the Infinity but I was expecting a big improvement that didn't show up. My Ultra 120 with one fan bested them both by a small margin.

Ahh, so here's something interesting! I'm looking forward for your comparison of Ultra using two fans vs Tuniq Tower vs 9700.
Your efforts are much appreciated!

So this is getting between Ultra120 and 9700 at one fan operation and at Infinity and Ultra120 in two fan operation.
Cool, the Ultra120 is starting starting to impress me, i was consider it the weakest but things are getting tough!
Keep it flowing! 8)

Actually, that's nothing new. In fact, my results have agreed WRT the 9700 vs. the Infinity and Ultra when the heat load is high. I've posted here on at least 2 threads that the 9700 is an excellent cooler for a hot-running CPU. Mine is equal to or better than either of the two Tuniqs I've tested on an OC'ed 4400+. But again, I only do dual prime because it's easy for a bench. Under normal operating conditions, the Ultra 120 runs cooler and quieter than the 9700. The only time I routinely put a big load on my CPU is when rendering and then the 9700 is slightly cooler than all the others. Ask yourself what matters most. All of these current HSFs are competitive performers so it gets down to cost, noise and to me a big one is leverage on the mobo. The Tuniq is by far the worst in this category. Very tall, top heavy and very heavy. with two fans, the Ultra is in the same ballpark. If you go this way, get some light guage springs at the hardware store and put some lift on the sucker.

For people in Europe the Tuniq Tower can be found in Overclockers.co.uk

TUNIQ TOWER 35.24 pounds VAT included IN STOCK

I'd need you to flesh this out a bit more to make sure I understand what you're trying to say. Put it this way: I've spent a fair bit of time overclocking three different Opty 170s. All three had the same steppings that are supposedly good for OC'ing. I had three DFI CFX3200s, an Asus A8NSLI32 and one DFI Ultra D mobo to work with and good RAM by OCZ, Corsair and Mushkin, a vartiety of DDR400 and 500 with good CAS specs, etc. The best CPU in terms of OC'ing behaved pretty much the same on all three mobos. The worst overclocker was more RAM and mobo sensitive but its best was 200MHz slower than the best overclocker. The slowest CPU had to have a sizeable VCore bump just to match the fastest one at stock VCore. And all three CPUs acted differently regarding overclocking as I bumped VCore and by this I mean in terms of heat production and in terms of maximum OC at a given VCore. When I look on forums dedicated to overclocking, I see similar behavior posted by other folks. Each CPU has its own set of characteristics and behaviors. So it sounds like you're making predictions that are too generalized.

And WRT HSFs and extrapolating from one wattage upwards, I think that approach is WAY off. Look at the Zalman 9700. At lower heat load, it is a fine cooler but not as good as the Ultra 120. But pump a bunch of heat into the 9700 and it comes into its own. Remember that HSFs vary in materials and construction. Go measure the diameter of the heat pipes for example. And then realize that the liquid in the heat pipes can affect what heat range they work best in as a function of pipe diameter, length, fin surface area, ambinet temp, airflow, etc. That's why we bother to test.

Scythe Inifinity. Got my D930 running at 4.2 perfectly stably! Shame i sold that chip actually, i rathed liked being able to say i had a 4.2ghz CPU  

i just choose a cooler at random from your list

i use the Asus star ice CPU cooler very nice and keeps things running cold

Well said!!

Well i hope you judged based on the specs from the sites. :?

56 votes so far and still Scythe leads by 2!

Hehe, I have been kinda less active now  

Ill start OC once I get the Raptor which is the only thing missing  

Yeah babe!! You're talking about the die hard Raptor X in your sig? Well i hope you get the candys soon dude!  
Btw, i pm'd taco with hell lot of questions about my future memory dilemma!  

So if you see him shooting me, don't blame him, he's right :mrgreen: !!

Well this poll is very interesting, i'm very curious to see the final winner!

I won't shoot you mike, I'm a nice person and I like you, always remember that. Just make sure before you make comments on stuff like raptors that many people have here that you contain yourself, other people that aren't as nice actually will flame on you. Just a warning, one of my mentors did that for me when I first joined forums, and it's only fair I give you the same warning. I'm not trying to be mean if it sounds like it, just trying to watch out for you

I apologize for not sticking around much, but I have a gig for my tenor tonight, and I'll be busy until probably close to 4 hours, I'll give you my undivided attention when I get back

Thanks for the help. I think i made a mistake though! 8O By calling the Raptor ''Die Hard'' i thought it was a good comment! I really like Raptors ang get the 74GB myself! I just wanted to say it's a beast! Not sure what i said wrong.  
Well anyway i would prefer the non X model but wth!! He's got a beautiful system and he will probably show it off so it worth every extra $$!! 8)

Dude you fine with me? Taco really scared me with his last post! :? I really didn't mean anything bad! Omg am i missing something and said something i shouldn't. Please let me know because i would hate to mess our good relationship for my bad english. :|

Just to know People, this poll ends in 4 February.
Thank you for voting so far!

I'm pretty sure nothing unrepairible happened. Then again, I didn't read anything above the last Taco post so I don't really know.