H80 question

[yuisporing]

So I ordered an h80 out of impulse and after reading user feedback about it, I'm kind of wondering if I should of just stuck with my Zalman cooler that I currently have.

I have my Zalman cooling my i7 860 @ stock clocks and it idles at 18-21c and even with prime 95 running I hit around 41c-45 max.

I've been reading about the h80 temps and it seems idle temps run higher and overall performance on load isn't that much of a difference but I guess results were varying. I don't really overclock and I guess I bought it to fit the look of my 600t se case but is there really going to be a performance boost for me?

BTW my room ambient temps are pretty chilly. Kind of wondering if I should return it if I'm not going to see a performance gain.

 

[Automata]

Idle temperatures mean nothing, so you can disregard that in your comparison. I would suggest remounting the cooler, to make sure it is making proper contact with the processor. If you had a camera, you could grab a picture of your thermal paste spread.

Those low end pre-made water cooling units are meant to compete with high end air coolers. Since you aren't loading it up that much (2.8 GHz is on the low end), you won't see a difference until you start getting towards the peak speed of your processor. Basically, you aren't dumping enough heat into the coolers to make a fair comparison.