How should I cool this thing?

[TruesdaleT]

Hi all.

I am on an incredibly tight budget (ie, $40 is about the max I can think about).

I've got a Tbird 1.4 on an Asus A7A266.

The motherboard is running about 37-38 C, and the CPU is about 48-51 C. I've got a "cheap" coolermaster on it, and I really need to get the thing cooler.

Should I buy an 80mm case fan for $4 on eBay or get something like a ThermalRight SK6 with a Delta fan?

Any other suggestions would be most appreciated.


Kelly Truesdale

1.4ghz Tbird - AYHJA (not overclocked, yet.)
Asus A7A-266
Micron PC2100 - 256mb
Seagate 40.8gb HD
Toshiba 16x DVD
ATI Radeon VE 32mb DDR

($768 -- not bad)

[Ferg]

How about a Golden Gate / Gladiator (http://svcompucycle.com/) with your choice of fan. Very good price for a very good hsf.

[Mad_Capr]

I just recently ditched my Coolermaster hsf and replaced it with a Thermalright SK6. I didn't go with the Delta 38cfm because of the noise. I got a Sunon 26.2cfm fan instead.

I highly recommend the SK6. Here are the facts:

Running a 1.33ghz @ 1.52 with vcore increased to 1.85 (default is 1.75). Settings are 11 x 138.

Temps with the Coolermaster ranged from 44c to 52c and the system was not 100% stable. A few lock ups and some 3d programs would just exit for no reason.

Temps with the SK6 range from 42c to 49c and SO FAR the system is 100% stable. After 45 mins of Prime 95 running a primality test on a 10,000,000 digit number, the cpu temp leveled off to a nice 47c.

I haven't tried to go higher than 1.52 yet, but with this SK6, it just might be possible.

Oh yeah, one other thing. I used Arctic Silver II thermal compound of course.