Overclocking 8150 W/O water cooling

I was originally going to use a Corsair H80 to cool this pc BUT, I built it in an old style Antec Tower without the large fan mount needed for the radiator . My only recourse now is to either, swap my whole system from #1 tower to #2 tower, which does have the large overhead fan mount, or buy a new tower AND the cooler. Since both pc's work great now, Ireally don't want to tempt Murphy's Law by swapping, and I don't have the finances at the moment for a new tower. Is there an air-cooled CPU heatsink that will work well enough, or should I just put off the whole project til I can buy the tower and cooler?

WarHippy I am assuming your case has a 120mm fan on the back to help exahust warm air from your case. That is where you would mount the H80 providing there is enough room ..... usually is.

+1 bassnut

If you decide to go air cooled, this is an oldie but a goodie...
Plus, it's cheap!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...yMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo

It is pretty big though, and will interfere with tall ram modules.
If you have those, you'll need to move them to the outside slots.
I've never found that to be a problem though...

If you go with a big air cooler, make sure your case is at least 8" wide or very nearly so to proved the clearance to the side panel needed for those 120mm fan-based tower style coolers.They are all around 160mm tall and I can tell you from experience it takes almost 8" of case width (measured across the top panel) to accommodate them. 7.5" may not do. And with the FX 8 core CPUs I would go with nothing less than the Noctua D14 for air cooling if you are going to overclock.

Thank you all for suggestions. After reading bassnut's post, i checked closer, and 120 fans are simply normal size case fans. When Corsair's specs mentioned top mounted exhaust fans, i automatically assumed they were referring to BIG fans, like the top fan of my Antec 900 Tower. Sorta misleading since the 120 mm fan has been the standard for many years. I ordered the H80 and should have it up and running in a few days. Quite a difference from my first water cooled pc. It was Thermaltake's first kit, complete with a fishtank coolant pump, external reservoir, and big, clunky, copper radiator, that mounted to the case using magnets.

Great choice. The one recomendation I have when hanging your rad on the back of your case is make sure the tubes are at the bottom of the rad. This will prevent any air bubbles from getting into the loop as these closed loop systems do have some air still inside the loop.

That cooler will server you well Hippy...

Just for giggles, heres a pic of my 1st watercooling, obviously homemade.
It's so dusty because it was in a closet for about 5 years (still worked though)

HAHA, nice! I'll bet you didn't have ANY overheating issues. It looks like it could cool a small car engine. My first system looked just as primitive but on a way smaller scale. The idea of trusting my cpu to a small plastic aquarium tank pump made me sorta nervous, but it never broke.

This thread seems to be pretty well settled, so I'm going to go OT to some extent..

Here's the parts list for that oldtimey WC box (built ~2005), it got me my 1st 3Ghz chip, an Opty 185 X2:
Rabbit water bottle
85 GPH pond pump (110v)
'86 Chevette heater core (all copper)
12v/110v relay so it turned on with the PC
I've always been a guy who was more about performance than asthetics (obviously )...

That brings me to the Xigmatek 1283 vs the Noctura D14...
Now, I agree with trents, the Noctura would probably perform better, but it's also about 3x the price of the Xiggy.
I was trying to offer a cheap holdover solution, and just to prove my point here's a couple pics of what that cooler can do in a push/pull configuration:



I set this up on a pizza box to try and get good numbers on a WinRar run and it held it's own with flying colors (otherwise I wouldn't have even suggested it )

Here are the results:



Granted, theres no way this would have been 24/7 stable, but for someone who's looking for a cheap air cooler, you have to admit it can hold it's own...

That's awesome! do you remember what the latency was on the memory stock? My ram has a latency of 7 but when i set it below 8, the computer randomly hangs. The brand of the memory too, if you remember that. I have my favorites list of memory makers, one of my favorites, corsair, doesn't seem like they even want to deal with AMD systems anymore. In their forums, all the posts that are asking why they can't make the ram work at the advertised latency, the corsair people say intel can access ram faster, and i just don't believe there is that much difference. I think they're a bunch of intel fanboys who don't want to be bothered with AMD problems. I can't even find my ram on their site, instead, alll you can find is ram with 9 latency, oh well......

It's an older kit of Corsair Dominator GT's 2000 8-8-8 (Elpedia Hyper IC's). Part # CMG4GX3M2A2000C8. Pretty sure you can't find them anymore, new anyway...

It's a 2x2 kit so I just use them for benching now. For 24/7 stability they'll do those timings ~1980 (on FX chips), still not too shabby.
On Deneb/Thuban they weren't quite that strong (and a little squirly). The IMC on FX is probably the best improvement over the older chips.

I agree that all the newer kits are running looser timings, but the frequency makes up for it to some extent.
For my main rig I'm running G.Skill RipjawX (2x4gb) @ 2250 9-11-10 (stable).