Quiet low profile (<77mm) CPU heatsink?

Cassandra · Post by **Cassandra** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 10:29 am

Hi! I've just bought an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200 processor (Socket 939), and when it arrived I realised that it was OEM, without any heatsink or fan at all... I've always in the past just used the stock heatsinks but I figured this was a good chance to try something new, since I have to get one anyway!

I'd really like to get something quiet, but my case only has ~78mm of space according to the manufacturer's website (I'm using a silverstone SG-1), and my motherboard is an Asus A8N-VM CSM... there's roughly 15mm clearance above the stock athlon 64 heatsink I have in just now, limited by the PSU above the cpu (PSU is a Seasonic S12, if it matters).

Also, I'm in the UK, and that seems to limit things a bit - for example, I've heard good things about the ThermalRight XP120 but I can't seem to find it available here.

Another option I considered was using the stock heatsink but switching the fan - I'm not very technical though, how difficult would this be?

Thank you very much for any advice you can give

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 10:52 am

Finding a good quiet <77mm HSF is like finding a good NBA center who's less than 5"6" tall. You have to be willing to make some serious sacrifices.

Have you considered that you might have selected the wrong case to put a good, quiet HSF into?

Chang · Post by **Chang** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:07 pm

You should be able to change the fan on the stock heatsink before it's mounted without much trouble provided you have the right sized fan.

For heatsinks of that size, your best bet will probably be some sort of Zalman flower. I'm pretty sure that Thermalright XP120 wouldn't fit with a standard 25mm thick fan mounted on it.

Cassandra · Post by **Cassandra** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 12:56 pm

Felger Carbon wrote:Finding a good quiet <77mm HSF is like finding a good NBA center who's less than 5"6" tall. You have to be willing to make some serious sacrifices.

Have you considered that you might have selected the wrong case to put a good, quiet HSF into?

lol, well, I'm definitely not expecting to get a totally silent computer

I just thought since I have to buy a heatsink anyway, there might be a better option than a plain stock one

Chang wrote:You should be able to change the fan on the stock heatsink before it's mounted without much trouble provided you have the right sized fan.

For heatsinks of that size, your best bet will probably be some sort of Zalman flower. I'm pretty sure that Thermalright XP120 wouldn't fit with a standard 25mm thick fan mounted on it.

I had looked at the zalman flowers, they definitely seem like a good option... At the moment certainly I think that's what I would go for if I get a 3rd party one

Edit: Though, I did wonder if there's been anything else to come out... the reviews I read of those heatsinks on this site were from a couple of years ago, and I would have thought someone might have improved on it in the time between...

I suppose my main question is, is it worth getting a fancier third party heatsink like a zalman, or would I be better just getting a stock heatsink and a quiet fan?

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 1:38 pm

i was looking around a month or so ago for a cpu heatsink of similar hight as you, and the best performing one i could find was the tried and true Zalman CNPS 7000 AL/CU.

It used to be the spcr reference before the ninja, and now that CPU power consumption has returned to a lower level they are again a viable option for low noise applications.

SebRad · Post by **SebRad** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 4:18 pm

For such low height the first thing that came to my mind was Zalman flower (7000, 7500, 7700) From Â£13 quite affordable too. They will easily cope with the low heat output of X2 4200. Once when I built a system with that CPU I used the stock cooler with fan speed control from the motherboard and it wasn't bad. I also tried with the stock cooler fixed to 5v and with 2x folding@home it climbed to ~60Â°C but with no stability problems. Setting BIOS to control fan speed (Q-Fan) or 5v trick are "low" cost options that might do it for you without spending money, which you can always do later if needs be.
Good luck, Seb

Cassandra · Post by **Cassandra** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 2:42 pm

Ok, thank you all very much! It's really helpful - sounds like the zalman is the best bet if I get third party, and I'll look at stock with a quiet fan too... thank you again, I really appreciate the help!

Cassandra · Post by **Cassandra** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 3:20 pm

Sorry to double post, I just have one last question... The one thing I'm worrying about with the zalman is the weight of it, I move this computer around quite a bit and it seems like 438g is quite a lot... does anyone know if this'll be ok? Or for that matter if the stock cooler is the same weight - I've been searching and searching for how much the stock cooler weighs to get an idea of what's normal but with no luck at all...

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 11:20 pm

438g is pretty light now a days in the generation of giant tower heatpipe coolers. Plus the 7000 has a lower center of gravity.

I'm not sure what it is now, but i know the Pentium 4's "specified max wieght" for a cpu cooler was 450g. Though ive seen people put up to 1kg of weight on cpu's without any adverse effects.

Cassandra · Post by **Cassandra** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:13 am

Oh ok, I saw the max weight said 450g (It's still the same

) and got a bit worried - as you can probably tell I'm kind of new at this

Thank you again!

Kreed · Post by **Kreed** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 3:16 am

You might want to consider the Cooler Master Vortex 752:

http://www.coolermaster.com/products/pr ... =1&id=2546
http://www1.coolermaster.com/index.php? ... rtex%20752

A review can be found here:

http://www.ninjalane.com/display.aspx?d ... 752&page=1

I believe it's height is 75.4 mm, which is within your requirement of being shorter than 77 mm.

Shuriken · Post by **Shuriken** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 6:19 am

Kreed wrote:You might want to consider the Cooler Master Vortex 752:
I believe it's height is 75.4 mm, which is within your requirement of being shorter than 77 mm.

Its 75.4 mm not counting the 25 mm fan coming on top of that

miahallen · Post by **miahallen** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 8:06 am

Cassandra, did you get a heatsink yet? How'd it work out? If you have not yet, you should definitely consider the one Silverstone reccommends for your case, the NT06-Lite. Pro-Clockers did a review recently and found it to be quite capable!

vortex222 · Post by **vortex222** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 10:13 am

i have also used the stock AMD cooler before getting the ninja, and i also will say its not too bad. When you have Cool'n'Quiet properly configured or use RMClock to lower the cpu heat output further, then its capable of beings a fairly quiet solution. My 4600 undervolts reasonably well and the stock cooler had no issues keeping it within reasonable temps at the usual full load, though the QFan would start to ramp it up into a noisy range after a while, but Idle it was really not that bad.