CPU Heatsink

[icex]

Hey,

I'm new to building pc's, ( excuse me for the stupid questions too if any ) and right now I am at the point of putting in the stock heatsink fan. I noticed that the cable is too long since the 4 pin socket to connect it to is very close by (and also in between big heatpipes as my motherboard is GA-P35-DQ6) and I don't want the cables to just go up high in the air where it can move around into the wrong place pretty easily. Also if i use cable ties i wonder how many loops i should do in the air with them or so for best efficiency ;/

Oh yeah i noticed that some people have solved the cable length problem like this

(not my pic as u can see by the way)
but I thought the heatsink would be too hot and ruin the cables such as melt it, shortcircuit it or something else?
Because of this it has got me wondering, can someone tell me what temperature the heatsink would get to at max maybe of the stock cooler, cause I thought it transfers all the heat from the cpu through it and that it'd be pretty damn hot under full load at like 70C possibly, unless I got it alll wrong about how hot heat sinks would get compared to the CPU.

Thanks

 

[Onus]

My stock Intel cooler on a stock e6750 hasn't gotten as high as 40c yet, even after hours of Guild Wars. That's not the most stressful game out there by a long shot, but I doubt there's much of anything you'd be likely to run that would make it hit so much as 50c, unless you're planning a high overclock. In that case, you want a better aftermarket cooler anyway.

 

[robx46]

The heatsink itself won't melt cables. If it does, you are in big trouble! The temp readings you would see for your cpu are for the cpu itself, not the heatsink.
Even without a fan the heatsink wouldn't be as hot as the cpu itself, but that is obvious. And since you have air blowing through the heatsink (via the fan) it cools off even more.

You should be able to put your finger on the heatsink even under full load and be able to keep it there without burning yourself. It will be warm, but not "meling cables" hot.

You didn't mention what cpu you have. But in any case, unless you have a C2D and aren't overclocking (which is crazy!), then I would buy a different HSF. The intel stock cooler just doesn't cut it.
I bought myself a coolermaster HSF for $30 and it dropped my temps by at least 10c idle and load with my C2D. I wouldn't have my 3.2ghz overclock if I still had the stock cooler.

Of course, if you don't mind spending like $70 or more, you can get a top of the line HSF for air cooling. You might get an extra few degrees cooler with something like my $30 coolermaster. Anyhow, even just paying $30 for a good HSF like I did will make a world of difference. Just make sure you get one that suits your case and airflow and doesn't disrupt it.
For example, I have a tunnel coming in from the side of my case to give air to the HSF, so I needed to get a HSF that has the fan parallel to the motherboard.
Even though some of the more expensive HSF's has the fan on its side (not parallel), the parallel fan still suited me the best.

Really, if design isn't an issue, then you can get good cheap or more expensive HSF's that do the job no matter how they are set up, then the big thing to look for is that they will fit properly in your case, not hit the PSU or NB, for example.

As for the cable. Yeah you should be able to wrap it around like the pic above. However, make sure you do it right because notice in the pic that the cables aren't even touching the heatsink because they are secured in those plastic notches, which are there just for this reason.

What I personally do is that since my coolermaster runs really quiet, I wanted it to run at 100% speed all the time. I didn't want the motherboard to control the speed. So what I did is I broke the plastic side off of one of my 3 pin connectors that come from my power supply and then I was able to fit the 4 pin connector into it. Beats getting some kind of adapter as it works perfectly and my fan runs quietly at 100% and the cable is stashed away in the upper front corner of my case, with all the other jumbled cables, so that I don't have any cables blocking airflow.