Be Excellent To Each Other

Not sure how interesting people will find this, but today I replaced my HSF on the C2D.

Reason being was that my idle temps (although fine @ 38'c) were soaring to 53'c+ when under load. This would explain the shutdown problem when playing Crysis Warhead (the rig is overclocked).

What I found odd was that the PC was stable in everything else but Warhead and Fallout 3. And it wasn't a predictable reset either, it would happen randomly at intervals from anything between 30 minutes and 2 hours +.

However, under investigation using both Orthos stress test and Speedfan I discovered that without throwing around heavy graphics (just a CPU stress, like) I was getting a small image of a flame next to my CPU temps. Not good !.

I decided to buy a new HSF and this time go all out. I looked at a few, but the one that drew me in the most was the Noctua NH-U9F after reading reviews of both it and it's larger brother, the NH-U12P. These are not cheap coolers. They are machined in Austria from aircraft grade aluminium and tip the price scales at around 45 quid for the NH-U9F (92mm fan, second fan optional) or 58 quid for the NH-U12P (120mm fan, second fan optional).

I decided after much deliberation to go with the NH-U9F and use two fans to create a wind tunnel accross the heatsink. Here is a pic of the 9F with a single fan set up.



Upon arrival I unpacked it. The fan is not connected to the sink, but that's not a problem as if it was you would have to remove it any way to fix the sink in place. Installation was a bit fiddly but then to be honest it usually is with something like this. It required a complete strip down of the PC and removal of the motherboard (due to the nature of the socket 775 set up).
There is a X shaped brace behind the motherboard that you bolt through the board into in order to support the weight of the cooler.
Being a very heavy cooler I expected things to be super awkward, but it was actually very easy due to some obvious over engineering.
Another nice plus is that they provide everything you could ever need in order to fit this to a computer. Thermal grease, every retention mechanism for every current socket (775, AM2+/3 and the old opteron socket) which is a very nice touch.
What I did notice though was how the cooler's fin/blade things were about three times thicker than the ones on my Arctic unit. I liked this, it meant that they didn't bend every time you so much as farted near it (unlike the Arctic which I have knocked a few times whilst cleaning and it became quite warped.).

Overall construction is beautiful and they also include rubber damping strips to stick to the part of the sink where the fan meets it, meaning you are free from rattles and noises. Also you get two sets of fan mountings should you decide to run dual fans (I did because I had a 92mm fan sitting here in the packing that I never used).

Here is a pic of the entire thing set up and put on.



As you can see it's quite a beast and beautifully made.

Overall results.

My idle temp is now 26-29'C and my full load temps in orthos top out at around 47. This might not seem like a massive difference, but bear in mind I was already using a seriously meaty third party cooler.

A wonderfully made and engineered product if you can take the 40+ quid price tag attatched. I paid 37 delivered from Ebay.

That's a serious HSF. Wowzers.

Saab?

That's what they're known as. Bit confuddling as to why however as they're Austrian

They're mildly cosmetically changed rebadges of a much cheaper, more popular brand who owns them?

hahahaha. I think they mean pre 92 pre GMC saab when they say that

Well, after two plus hours of hardcore Crysis - Warhead action I cannot get the computer to lock up.

Awesome I think I'm on the very last bit too, sadly it involves those annoying alien things and not Korean soldiers.

Harumph.

Pah! My Thermalright cooler disagrees:



But they're nothing compared to this monstrosity:

Now, if I had any ability with Photoshop, or even Paint, my post here would not contain text, it would just be that picture of Xzibit (or however he fucking spells exhibit) saying, "we knew you liked heatsinks, so we put a heatsink on the heatsink on your heatsink so you could sink while heat etc".

I had a go at chopping it onto JC's tram car like a supercharger, but the angles were all wrong. Here's how it could have looked (sort of).

haha, all I need now are a couple of chrome NOS bottles on the side

What's your chip? There aren't really any modern chips that should be struggling at 53 degrees C. Unless of course the issue was with that heat being dumped off the chip into the case and then not dispersed effectively.

It's an E4500 so 2.2ghz stock.

It would seem that the problem isn't heat. For some reason this chip just does not like being overclocked. I've tried everything from FSB with no voltage to a slight up in the voltage and it just seems to fall over ever single time.

I know a lot of it is luck with batches and so forth so I guess this one just isn't up to it.

I have, however, got it stable @ 2.5ghz now. Like properly 100% safe stable at good temps (27 idle and 48 stressed).

I just can't get it totally stable @ 2.7, and supposedly this chip is good for 3ghz so I guess I've just hit a wall

It doesn't really matter any way. Early C2EE chips are around the 150 mark now (used) so as soon as they hit a hundred quid I'll get one of those I'm not going to bother with quad core 'cos I've been there before and it makes absolutely no difference over dual.

If it's like a saab it should have water injection after the charge cooler.

...and be owned by a Geography teacher?

Thing is, there's no fans.

But I thought tossrStu liked them...