Need advice about cooler

[u1tradt]

I have an AMD Phenom x2 550 BE which I want to buy a new cooler for. After searching extensively I couldn't find a cooler within my price range that properly met my requirements (silence first, cooling capabilities after) based on the benchmarks I've looked at.

However, I'm thinking maybe I could buy a cheap cooler for the heatsink for around £10 and buy a compatible case fan seperately (Either Be Quiet's range or Scythe Kama Flow 2) and replace the cooler's fan with the new fan.

Is that a good idea? Or am I sacrificing performance since those fans weren't built primarily for CPU cooling?

 

[buzznut]

I have an AMD Phenom x2 550 BE which I want to buy a new cooler for. After searching extensively I couldn't find a cooler within my price range that properly met my requirements (silence first, cooling capabilities after) based on the benchmarks I've looked at.

However, I'm thinking maybe I could buy a cheap cooler for the heatsink for around £10 and buy a compatible case fan seperately (Either Be Quiet's range or Scythe Kama Flow 2) and replace the cooler's fan with the new fan.

Is that a good idea? Or am I sacrificing performance since those fans weren't built primarily for CPU cooling?

I recommend you take a look at www.frostytech.com, they have coolers listed by both silence and cooling performance. I think you'll find something affordable there.

 

[u1tradt]

I found what seemed to be good coolers there. But pretty much every single one that I'd want is either not available anymore or out of my price range.

Would it be a bad idea to get, for example, an Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 and replace the fan with a case fan which is known to be quiet but with good airflow at the same time?