I love ThermalRight...

[Zxian]

So... my I built my workstation a little while back, built around the Intel Q6600 CPU. I wanted to have it as cool as possible, while still being quiet. The Ultra120 Extreme is the best heatsink tested over at SPCR, so I picked up one of those for the system. With a Scythe S-Flex E fan running at about 9V, my highest temperatures are about 52C while running Prime95 v25.4 with small FFTs. (This is a 2.7GHz overclock... minor, but still overclocked)

I had picked up an EVGA 8600GT OC video card, and used the stock cooler up until last night. I wanted some beefier cooling on the card, since temps went up to about 75C at load. Again... ThermalRight to the rescue with the HR-03. I had a bit of a conundrum with installation though - if I followed the instructions, the heatsink interfered with components on my motherboard. With the heatsink above the card, it would hit the northbridge heatsink. With the heatsink below the card, the retension nuts hit one of the capacitors on the motherboard. After reversing the bolts and the nuts on the heatsink clip, I was able to make it fit (pictures will come later - it was late last night). I decided to test this thing passively, since I figured that I could add a fan later if needed.

The results...

Idle temperature: 49C (previously 52C)

Load temperature: 60C (previously 72-75C)

I loaded the GPU using rthdribl. This lets you stress the heck out of your GPU, while still remaining in Windows to monitor fan speeds and temperatures. Remember... these temperatures are with a passive heatsink! I'm quite impressed....

[Nerwin]

wow, thats awesome and craziness, You soo lucky I wanna build a new computer but its either a new computer or a new Electric guitar.. errr.. soo hard to choose Oh well. Sounds like that heatsink is really good, Hey is your system air cooled or water cooled?

[Zxian]

Everything is air cooled. I've found that with the few fans I've got in my system, it runs quieter than with water cooling. I'm not crazy like some people here *cough*ripken*cough*, so the Ultra120 does the trick for me.

[Nerwin]

Everything is air cooled. I've found that with the few fans I've got in my system, it runs quieter than with water cooling. I'm not crazy like some people here *cough*ripken*cough*, so the Ultra120 does the trick for me.

haha, I know. I dont really care for watercooling, frankly if your not going to OC your PC to 5Ghz you dont really need water cooling as in this theary, if your going to do it at 5Ghz your prolly need liquid nitrogen

My system is like a server, yep, nice and loud, my mobo stays at aroung 25C and CPU stays aroung like 31C and Video stays around 40C so its pretty good But It makes me sleep good (white noise)

[ripken204]

he, stop teasing me

keeps everything nice and cool my cpu doesnt even get to zxian's idle temps on load, im only OCed to 3GHz at the moment. but my 8800GTS has been overclocked alot and i definatly love it now. some games on max setting it would lag, and we cant have any of that, so the OC is working nicely on that. the Q6600 really doesnt need to be OCed so until i need something that will really push it, i wont OC it that much. im running below stock volts now anyways and it's OCed. im idling at 25C right now, and my comp is really quiet, finally. but now i don't have space to put a sound card in