Went quite well. I thought I would provide some pics for the several folks looking into this. There wasn't even a question about clearance in my Silverstone TJ09... I was able to attach it to the slide out tray and slide it right in.

I used a Xig bracket as well.







Kinda odd, BIOS reports the CPU temp as below ambient. (Room temp was 73F)




Idle temps in XP are 31c CPU, and 30c MB. My case internal temp gauge is showing 24c.

Now to stress it....

Hurry! Some of us wanna see this big mother-farking fan/HS under stress. You should have said it was because I asked you to, that would've made me feel good. ^^

I had quite a bit of trouble. Crysis won't run on this board. Something about the drivers or hardware set off the copy protection.

The OCZ reapers will not run at anything over 400Mhz @1.88v... well, let me qualify that. I can boot and do simple tasks in XP all the way up to 566Mhz @2.2v, but gaming is out and running the RAM at 1333 is about only good for a min or two before BSOD.

So, it took me a while to find ways to stress the CPU. I have a few hours in with CoD4 at stock CPU speeds, and AOC seems stable now.

So far max CPU core reported by the ASUS Probe is 30c. Right now it's reporting 17c, far cooler than the ambient temp in the room though.

I just DLed Core Temp, and that shows a Tj. max of 105 and both cores at 38c... seems a bit extreme.

Okie well, can't seem to stress out the CPU much... Pushed hard but they only went up 9c at the most. Core temp reported 47c at 95% load, ASUS said 26, another pgm I grabbed went from 32 to about 39 or 40.

My true Tcase must be about +5, so realistically we're looking at about 22 idle Tcase and 38 idle cores, 31 max Tcase and 47 max cores, which works out about right.

I just OC'ed my E6550 from 2.33GHz to 2.6GHz on stock. Considering it was my first OC, I feel good. About to leave it on Prime95 all night. Temps max at 62C. When I pickup the Q6600 and that same cooler as you, it'll be fun

Good luck, you'll get there eventually!

I'm getting this exact CPu and heatsink, though the P5E mobo. It looks like the 1283 is barely fitting next to the mobo heatsinks. How hard was it to install and fit?

Also, where do you think would be a nice and stable overclock for the 8400? I'm sort of new to OCing so I don't want to push it without knowing what I'm doing.

any news on a overclock for your set up yet Proximon?

I've literally today ordered the same board/cpu/ram wondered what sort of speeds your up to at the moment.

Gah don't order that OCZ kit with this board! It's pretty and all but it won't clock at anything over 800, stably.

From my extensive reading I'm guessing Corsair is the most compatible with this board.

I would not say it was tight anywhere. Just the fan is about 1/4" from the northbridge HS. There is no "fitting" involved. Just orient the cooler so that the center heatpipe runs between the two cores, rather than across. (Quad core CPUs are best done in the other direction)

There are tiny grooves in between the heatpipes on the base. I recommend filling these in with your TIM. Remove all excess. I was using a razor blade to spread and remove the AC5, just working it around until I had the grooves full and no excess on the rest. Then three very thin lines of TIM down each pipe (it's like using your AC5 syringe like a pen), about half the length of the contact areas on each pipe, centered.

The bracket sticks to the back of the board, you bolt the bolt kit onto the cooler, apply TIM, bolt it down. After the Cooler is completely tightened down, you install the fan. Pulling the little rubber dealy through the fan bolt hole takes a little finger strength and patience, then attaching the fan to the cooler is a matter of finding ways to use a little force without bending fins or cutting yourself.

I would say the entire CPU heatsink process took me from 15-20 minutes. By far the longest time I have ever spent on one since I built my first comp in '94. I'm reasonably mechanical. If I had to do it again it would take me more like 10-12 minutes.

I only got it because it was on offer at the time, i dont intend to take the RAM too high really... but i will be looking at the dominator at a later date, read all the reviews, just couldnt spare that extra £50 at this moment in time..... and didnt want to have the board and CPU sat there staring at me for another 2 week... hate waiting for stuff lol

Hey proximon when you applied the TIM did you apply it to first the grooves, then on the heatpipes, and then more on the CPU? Is that excessive?

Wow yes that would be excessive to the extreme.

-Fill in the grooves and scrape everything off with a razor, leaving full grooves.
-Apply only to heatpipes as described.
-Put nothing extra on the CPU.

Remember, your goal here is the least amount of TIM possible! Good TIM spreads VERY thin... far more than you imagine.

If you are really unsure, bolt down the cooler then remove it again and inspect how the TIM spread. Once you do that you'll want to scrape it off again, clean up the CPU, then re-apply.

Remember, a hair or even microscopic particles could mess this up. Don't leave TIM exposed to the air for any length of time.

Ok here is my OC. This is as far as I ever intended to take this CPU. I'm in it for stability and longevity.

All I changed from my standard set up was to up the FSB from 333 to 400. Once I did that the RAM had changed, so I had to reset that to 801Mhz. I left the CPU voltage on auto. My RAM is currently set to 1.86v.

Here is a screen of various numbers while running Prime95. The maximum Core Temp reported was 58c on core 0, briefly during one test. Mostly it was maxxed at 56, as shown. I think Tj. Max of 105c is a bit excessive, but whatever That's the way the author of Core Temp wants it.

I intend to leave everything just like that.

Nice, this is probably exactly what I'll do if I get the 8400..it's competing with the 6600 since they're the same price.

What's the Tj Max (I'm noob at OC)?

Thanks for all the updates, Prox. I'll be using that cooler too, but on a Q6600

Think of Tj. Max as a way of calibrating the actual core temps. The signals from the core sensors don't really tell you anything until you assign a Tj. Max.

This is probably the most informative paper you'll find anywhere on the internet about modern Intel CPU temps:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] ture-guide

Well worth taking an hour to dig through it and really understand.


One last thing:
If I had my memory a bit more flexible and was willing, I have no doubt I could get well over 4Ghz stable with this set up. The P45 chipset is going to be very nice once the drivers and BIOSes mature.

In my potential rig I have an asus x48 mobo right now but I noticed the P48 is a lot cheaper but doesn't seem that much different. I don't need a 2nd ethernet port and I hear that 2x16 vs 2x8 doesn't make a huge difference (is that true?). So the last thing I guess is overclocking and temp control. Any recommendations? The P48 board is almost 100 bucks cheaper...

As far as 2x8, most people seem to be holding judgment on what the performance hit will be, but there will be some. Waiting for drivers to mature a bit with ATI and the P45 makers.

x48: better (maybe only slightly) CF graphics performance, mature drivers, well tested memory configs.

P45: Ultimately better OCer, nice board cooling, possible 16gigs RAM. Immature drivers, more memory hassles until different configs are fully tested.

Probably if I was planning on getting the most FPS I could I would have gone with x48.

When you said to apply the heatsink across the cores do you mean do apply it so that the heatpipes are vertical or horizontal when the processor is orientated like this:

http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/ap [...] l_wcap.pdf

Edit:clarification: In the image in the arctic silver guide it shows a vertical box that contains the cores, my question is if the cores are thin and to the right/left of each other, or wider and on top/below one another.

Let me see if I can find the reference for you....

Ok I'm a bit suprised. I thought a dual core looked a bit different, but that's right. I think based on that it will be pretty obvious how you want the heatpipes to align. The center heatpipe is almost exactly the width of the chip, so it will cover it well.


In other words, your center heatpipe will cover both cores. I thought, based on another diagram I saw, that it was running in between them, and the two outside pipes were the ones working. Either way, that's right. Just right up the center of the CPU, the same as the red line in the AC paper.

Thanks very much!