Hi, I'm new to this forum so please don't kill me if i make any newbie mistakes Anyway I'm about to build my new pc, specs are as follows: Phenom II X4 960T 8GB Corsair Vengeance Asus M5A78L-M LX MoBo 600W Corsair Builder Series PSU And I was thinking about cooling. I have a 120mm case fan as well as a 80mm. I want to know if the stock fan on the CPU would keep it cool enough or whether I should buy a heat-sink or more case fans before i even put it together. I'm not planning on over-clocking and my case is a antec 300. I was looking at this cooler: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/tita...eatpipe-up-to-130w-for-all-intel-and-amd-cpus Good/Bad? Cheers!
I'm not sure if you already know this, but AMD includes the CPU heatsink/fan in retail boxes only. So if you get an AMD CPU labeled OEM, you get no stock heatink/fan. With that aside ... The stock heatsink/fan while not terrible, is nothing great. It will get the job done, and I've used them in the past successfully. Although, I also wouldn't recommend using them. Truthfully the fan is not even that bad, it's the heatsink that is most inadequate. And that heatsink you looked at, looks like it should be a huge improvement from the stock. In addition, when you change the heatsink, remember to use high quality thermal paste!!! Any of the common favorites should suffice, although I prefer AS5. Make sure you clean/remove the old stuff, if it comes already gooped. I can't stress this enough, the stock paste is garbage. I will admit it has become better these days, when you compare it to years past.