I7 960 OC stock cooler vs OC Aftermarket air cooler

[bigman8291]

Hello, I ordered an Asus Rampage III Formula 2 nights ago and am expecting it's arrival. I'm building a gaming rig from the ground up piece by piece as money becomes available. I've been searching for some stable OC results on an I7 960 using the stock cooler and an aftermarket air cooler. I'm not very experienced with Overclocking, so, I would like to hear from anybody that has some physical/empirical results (that seem pretty legitimate) on overclocking this proc. I plan on ordering a coolermaster 932 also...just a little extra info.

 

[Hobybobag]

I'm not an intel person at all, but I can tell you that you're not going to get much of an overclock out of an i7 with the stock cooler, as they run pretty hot to start with.

However, if you can give me a price range i can suggest some good aftermarket coolers if you want

 

[jb6684]

You can't even run stock speeds with the stock cooler. You'll hit 80C easy on a Prime95 run too hot for me (70C is more reasonable)...

My i7-950 runs @ 3.2Ghz (daily driver setting)
- 30C idle
- 57C after hours of Prime95
- Cooler : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608014

Hey, I run SLI 460s running at 850Mhz. I see Zero (0) FPS increases on games or game bench marks running the CPU 3.0Ghz to 3.6Ghz so I don't push the CPU much. If you've got more GPU power, maybe a higher overclock makes sense.....



I also run an i7-930 OC'd to 3.3Ghz (daily driver setting)
- 68C after hours of Prime95
- Venomous X cooler with two Noctua NF-P12 fans http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608004

- I run mid-70C at 3.6Ghz (for bragging rights only...)

Hey, I run CrossFire 5870s running at 870Mhz. I see Zero (0) FPS increases on games or game bench marks running the CPU 3.0Ghz to 3.6Ghz so I don't push the CPU much. If you've got more GPU power, maybe a higher overclock makes sense.....

 

[bigman8291]

Thanks for the replies guys, I'm just trying to stay as informed as possible to get the most out of my $$$. I was thinking anywhere from 40-80$ on a heatsink. I understand that overclocking usually doesn't yield any gains if the cpu isn't the bottleneck, I just know that in the future it could potentially become a bottleneck then OC'ing may become inevitable.

 

[bigman8291]

Best answer selected by bigman8291.