Basic PC Cooling revolves around a chain of three links. Each link is important to the ultimate goal of running your CPU as cool as you can realistically and financially achieve.
1) PC Room temperature
If your room is hot, your system will be hot and consequently your CPU will run hot. Strive to place your PC in as cool a location as possible. Having it on the floor is a big plus as the floor tends to be cooler than the desktop.
2) Case ventilation
Assuming your room is reasonably cool, you need to get the heat out of your PC case in order for your HSF to be able to do its job. The best HSF will only keep your CPU as cool as the temperature of the air it has to work with for exchanging that heat. Generally, a mid-tower or full tower are considered the best form factors. Both allow you to place intake and exhaust fans in them that, if they produce adequate thru-case airflow, will allow your case temperature to be near or at room temperature.
3) HSF, an acronym for HeatSink & Fan assembly
With the other two factors properly dealt with, it's down to this device. The HSF is the "front-line" soldier in the battle against heat. Given a cool environment to work within, a good HSF, when implemented properly, will allow as much heat to be exchanged as possible. HSFs come with a rating that expresses how well they accomplish that job. The term defines how high the CPU core temperature will rise above the case temperature for every watt of heat it generates. You see this expressed as degrees celsius per watt, or c/w. Armed with that information, you need only look at reputable HSF reviews and find the one with the lowest c/w for the amount of money you wish to spend. It doesn't hurt to read several reviews or shoot-outs to make certain you get an average result of several efforts. There are reviews and shootouts available at most OC Web sites. Try a search engine keyed on CPU heatsink review and/or shoot-out and/or comparison, etc. I think you get the picture. Here, at Overclockers.com, we are fortunate to have Joe Citarella. He is very objective in his reviews and IMHO, uses as good a scientific technique as is realistically available. Check out the large shoot-outs pages. Get an idea of the ones you are interested in. Then, come back here and see if Joe has a review on them.
A well thought-out cooling solution, that keeps all three links of the chain in mind, will be effective, affordable and relatively easy to implement.
Hoot
