Quiet cooler for my i7 950.

i think you should add cooler master hyper 212+ it is ad good cooler for the price and there is also corsair h50 and h70 both are pretty good.
cant seem to find prolima tech.
for the thermalright a few people havent liked it.
and the arctic cooling seems to be a good one

I have a Zalman CNPS10X Extreme and it's very quiet, however, the PWM function of the stock fan broke and their support hasn't helped me at all so that sucks. I bought a Scythe Slip Stream PWM fan, and it's equally quiet but cools a little better. At top speed it only hits 37dB, 110cfm.

So no matter what you get, if you feel it's too loud you can just replace the fans anyway.

I don't really know about those ones you listed, I mean really, the only valid way to figure out which to get is through benchmarks showing cooling performance and noise levels because anything an individual says will probably be opinion.

Water cooling can definitely be the quietest but also the most expensive. I don't know how loud the h50 or h70 are, but performance wise they don't show a benefit over a good air cooler.

Thanks for all the replies.
I did some more research and found the Scythe Mugen 2 rev. B which seems to suit my needs.
The only thing I'll need to watch out for is whether or not the fan will cause any problems with my RAM.
I'm only going for 3x2GB anyway, so I can leave the 3 slots nearest the CPU empty anyway.

Probably not, RAM slots are usually paired into channels. If you're interested in triple channel RAM you'll have to use slots 2, 4, 6 so only the first slot will be open. Most coolers won't cover more than 1 slot, but some very large ones will. I think the Mugen will be ok.

I totally forgot about that, thanks for reminding me.
It's been ages since I've put together a system.

remember you can set a setting in the BIOS so that the fans only ramp up the speed when things start getting hot. That what i do with my cool master v6gt with stock fans:-

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-r...

So most the time its very quiet, then things get warm, (I use an i7 920 @ 3.8GHz) they speed up, even then they are not massive'y loud and do a great job at cooling the CPU.

If you want you could buy other fans. BUT if you are planning on buying other fans then get a different cooler, as you's be wasting money on this one cos i comes with 2 fans.

By the way, if your looking for 120mm fans for your case etc, then i can recommend these for running virtually silent, infact you cant hear the motor, only a slight soft sound of the air moving if you put your ear close.:-

http://tech-reviews.co.uk/reviews/akasa-120mm-apache-fa...

You're funny mentioning the Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme Rev.2 with the likes of two really good coolers.
However upon reading further down the thread i think you''ve made an excellent choice with the Mugen 2.
It's a beast of a cooler to install you might need assistance if things are close regarding a filled dimm the fan can be adjusted up an inch or so to clear the ram.