I want to upgrade from the stock cooler but...

[DanFraser]

I have the system in my sig and it is so quiet I have to press my ear directly to the case to hear anything other than the DVD drive. When I'm gaming or doing CPU intensive tasks the temperature gets to around 56c (usually on core 2 because every task picks on that one for some reason).

There's an odd reason for wanting it lower. My 'office' is only big enough for the desk and my chair being a claimed by me walk in wardrobe thing. And it heats up like mad when a computer can maintain a high temperature.

So what air cooler would be very quiet if not as quiet as the stock cooler, but not passive and is much better than the stock cooler for keeping temps low without being expensive. Realistically my budget is about £25 but if I can go lower for a 2 degree difference between the options that would be fine.

Opinions and suggestions everyone?

(as a side note there is no over clocking on the computer at all, I even leave the options that lower vcore and frequency on that appear in the bios)

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Lowering the temperature of the chip won't change the amount of heat it puts out.

You're looking at an amount of heat (in watts) dumped into that environment by the computer, and a better heatsink won't change that number of watts.
The better heatsink only changes how efficiently that same number of watts is transferred from the chip to the air.

 

[DanFraser]

Oh I know about the first part you mentioned. I think I should have worded it as if it's more efficient (?) it allows the little box room more of a chance to get rid of any heat before the room air heats up too quick. Or something. I dunno.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

If you want the room cooler you need to change the wattage the computer outputs as heat, not the temperature of the chip.

 

[RnRollie]

^^^in other words: you need to get more "fresh" air into the ROOM

Heat sources of PC: CPU, GPU, PSU... even if you would drastically undervolt the CPU, it wont change a lot to what the PSU & GPU puts out , which is between 75W (idle) & 350W (load) in your case.

So, a hole in the wall/ceiling or a simple box fan would yield better results than tinkering with the PC.