Aftermarket Heatsink Reaching 85 degrees Celsius?

[PCBuilderProbs]

For years I stuck with a stock heatsink that overheated on 100% load and caused my computer to shut off until finally, about a week ago, I purchased an aftermarket cooler, the Arctic Alpine 64 Pro Rev. 2 off of Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/ARCTIC-Alpine-Pro-Rev-Cooler/dp/B002CIDIPW/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1427212172&sr=8-6&keywords=alpine+cpu+cooler) along with Antec Formula 7 Nano Diamond Thermal Compound.

After installing onto my motherboard with an AMD FX 8120 I was getting good temps at idle (19 degrees Celsius) but whenever I run Prime95 the temperature shoots up to 85 degrees. A stable 85 degrees, I'll give it that, I ran Prime95 for an hour and then ran it on idle the entire night, but still I have no idea why it does this. I understand with Intel most go with a bit less than "finger tight" when installing the heatsink so before the first hour of having the heatsink installed was up (before the thermal paste could cure) I actually uninstalled and reinstalled it, this time making sure that I didn't screw it on tight, yet it still shot up to 85 degrees. I'm not even able to access the CPU fan speed on my BIOS since my motherboard is so old.

I've heard Speedfan can override this, but I'm not sure at all about that. If any of you guys know what the problem is, something I may have overlooked or something, please let me know.

 

[synphul]

If I had to guess, it's because it's likely that the cooler just isn't sufficient enough to get rid of the heat. It's a really inexpensive cooler and I wouldn't expect it to do much better than a stock cooler. The reason many aftermarket coolers do well is using a heatpipe design with a larger fan to really get rid of the heat. That arctic 64 pro is a basic chunk of metal with a fan.

Looking at a review done on that cooler on a quad core phenom x4 9650 (95w cpu vs 125w fx 8120 with 8 cores), it performed worse than the stock cooler by a degree under load. Basically you need a capable cooler for that cpu.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Arctic-Cooling-Alpine-64-Pro-CPU-Cooler-Review/894/6

You may not want to go any less in performance than a cm hyper 212 evo, but there are other options as well. Depending on your case, there are several tower and low profile coolers that will work but 'budget' aftermarket cooler is usually $30-40. Cryorig h7, h5, c1, several noctua coolers, phanteks has various tower coolers with 120mm and 140mm fans.

 

[PCBuilderProbs]

If I had to guess, it's because it's likely that the cooler just isn't sufficient enough to get rid of the heat. It's a really inexpensive cooler and I wouldn't expect it to do much better than a stock cooler. The reason many aftermarket coolers do well is using a heatpipe design with a larger fan to really get rid of the heat. That arctic 64 pro is a basic chunk of metal with a fan.

Looking at a review done on that cooler on a quad core phenom x4 9650 (95w cpu vs 125w fx 8120 with 8 cores), it performed worse than the stock cooler by a degree under load. Basically you need a capable cooler for that cpu.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Arctic-Cooling-Alpine-64-Pro-CPU-Cooler-Review/894/6

You may not want to go any less in performance than a cm hyper 212 evo, but there are other options as well. Depending on your case, there are several tower and low profile coolers that will work but 'budget' aftermarket cooler is usually $30-40. Cryorig h7, h5, c1, several noctua coolers, phanteks has various tower coolers with 120mm and 140mm fans.

Looks like I made a bad purchase decision huh :/ I know for a fact that my mid-tower case won't be able to fit a beefy Hyper212 EVO unfortunately. I was looking into the Cooler Master Gemin II a while back but that's discontinued unfortunately, which is a shame since many users reported it cooled their RAM sticks too and they were able to OC their RAM because of it.

I guess I should probably just go straight for liquid cooling since my case has a 240MM fan slot on top for a radiator. Thanks for the quick response by the way.

 

[synphul]

That's one way to go with it sure, the aio cooler if you have room for it. What case do you have? There may be an air cooler that will fit, even a better designed low profile cooler. With today's cpu's, especially 8 core or overclocked 4 core the better cooling solutions for air coolers rely on heatpipes which are filled with a liquid chemical and transfers heat away from the cpu very fast and efficient. The arctic coolers are a bit outdated in their design in my opinion since a large chunk of metal just doesn't pull the heat away fast enough. Not sure where you're from but if from the u.s., from the looks of it you're only out about $10 on the cooler so not a huge mistake no.

 

[PCBuilderProbs]

That's one way to go with it sure, the aio cooler if you have room for it. What case do you have? There may be an air cooler that will fit, even a better designed low profile cooler. With today's cpu's, especially 8 core or overclocked 4 core the better cooling solutions for air coolers rely on heatpipes which are filled with a liquid chemical and transfers heat away from the cpu very fast and efficient. The arctic coolers are a bit outdated in their design in my opinion since a large chunk of metal just doesn't pull the heat away fast enough. Not sure where you're from but if from the u.s., from the looks of it you're only out about $10 on the cooler so not a huge mistake no.

Yeah, I'm only out about $10 so it isn't too big of a deal. I'll probably look into heatsinks with heatpipes later though, no idea they actually had a chemical in them which now makes a lot more sense to go with one of those. I have an AZZA mid-tower case and I know the Hyper 212 EVO won't fit so I'll probably go with one of cooler master's smaller heatsinks. Thanks so much for the response btw.

 

[synphul]

You're welcome. Just be sure to check out some reviews, usually if there's a cooler you're interested in there are reviews for them. Those reviews give an idea of the cooling performance of the reviewed cooler to several others for comparison purposes. Even if the test system isn't the same, it will be a relative comparison.

I knew heatpipes had a chemical in them, the idea is the chemical heats up, expands and travels to the further end of the pipe where it's cooled and condenses then returns to the bottom of the heatpipe against the cpu. Just wasn't sure how effective it was until I was cleaning an older cooler master v8 using hot water (fans removed of course). My hot water is set pretty high and even though my fingers were a good 5" away from where the water stream was rinsing the heat sink, it took maybe a second or less - almost instantly scorched my fingertips like I ran them under the scalding water and nearly dropped the heat sink lol. They work quite well.