Which older Air Cooler should I use on 2600K?

[Ice009]

Hey guys,

I'm about to upgrade an older socket 775 system (Q6600) that I have to a socket 1155 (2600K) based system, and while thinking about which Air cooler to use I realized I still have a few laying around from socket 775 systems. As far as OC goes I'm only looking for a 4.5Ghz-4.6Ghz OC for a 24/7 rig.

The coolers I have are :

1. Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120
2. Noctua NH-U12P
3. CoolerMaster V8 (bought it second hand, but never got around to using this).

I don't have a socket 1155 mounting kit for any of these coolers, but I can buy one locally for any of these heatsinks, so just need to decide if it's worth using any of these coolers. What do you guys think? Is it worth saving some money and reusing one of these coolers?

I'm currently using the TRUE 120 on the Q6600 system and was thinking of buying the VenomousX BTK and reusing the TRUE on the 2600K system over the Noctua NH-U12P because the TRUE has 6 heatpipes Vs 4 for the Noctua, so I thought it would be the better choice. Not sure about the CoolerMaster V8 though as I never actually used it on a system before.

Also, what fan would you guys recommend on the cooler you choose? I have a spare GT 1850rpm fan that I can use.

[STEvil]

True.

[Ice009]

Thanks for the reply. Anyone else got an opinion, would like as many as possible. How would you guys rank the coolers in terms of performance?

[Hondacity]

if you can get the vault for the true, the true

[Buckeye]

I have run Mega Shadows with no complaints.
Performance would be very close to a True I would expect.

Both those are very good coolers.

I have used a V8 before and found them to be some what lacking. You could do a fan mod on it tho to beef up performance.

[Ice009]

I have run Mega Shadows with no complaints.
Performance would be very close to a True I would expect.

Both those are very good coolers.

I have used a V8 before and found them to be some what lacking. You could do a fan mod on it tho to beef up performance.

Can you use any fan on the V8? What kind of fan mod do you have to do to use a different fan on the V8? Is there something unique about the fan that comes with it? I thought it was just a regular 120mm fan, and that you could put any 120mm fan in there?

if you can get the vault for the true, the true

The vault?


Edit : 185 views and hardly anyone has an opinion? These are pretty well known air coolers that have been around quite a while. I'm sure quite a few people have had experience with them, please post and tell me what you think guys.

Edit 2 : I'm also curious about what fan/s people recommend. Should I just use the GT 1850rpm fan or how about the new Noctua NF-F12? I was looking at that fan as an alternative. Anyone used one? Gotta put the order in this week so if anyone can reply within the next day that would be great. Thanks.

Also, the metal tabs on the bottom of the TRUE where the fan clips go on are broken. Anyone have the same problem? I've got a couple of those plastic fan holders that I bought a long time ago because of it, but not sure if you can use two of those plastic fan holders at the same time for push/pull?

[Tom128]

For what its worth I have two 2600K's, one with an S1283 and the other with a TRUE Spirit. The S1283 is mediocre, once the voltage gets towards 1.25-1.3 it gets disapointing. The True Spirit has me in disbelief at the moment, it keeps temps in the low 50s even with decent voltage. Ive not pushed it too hard yet though.

[Movieman]

I have a Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120 on my 2600K
Temps in the low 60's at load at 4332MHz in a open case in a 72F room
Runs 100% load 24/7 for the last year at those settings

[bot@xs]

i would also say true but with one or better two good fans the noctua would be a good choice too

[nksharp]

Don't use the GT unless you get a closed loop cpu cooler. The biggest benefit of that fan is low noise/high static pressure which is good for radiators but pretty expensive as just a case fan or cpu fan.

[wez]

TRUE + GT 1850rpm
Great combo

[LagunaX]

TRUE, 1 GT will do for 4.6ghz but you'll need 2 for 4.8ghz.
You might need rubber bands or zip-ties as fan clips don't work so well with the GT's unless you cut some plastic off.

[[XC] Oj101]

There's a much easier way than cutting! Grab the offending piece with a pair of pliers and snap it off, it breaks very cleanly.

[Ice009]

So I went with the TRUE 120. Got the VX mounting kit and installed it with two GT 1850rpm fans. I was still able to mount the fans with the stock clips, you just have to have the fan's power cord at the top of the heatsink and you can still mount the fans by pulling the clips over a bit more than usual. Anyway, what I wanted to ask is, what is a realistic overclock with this setup and what do you guys use for stability testing?

I won't be doing anything really critical with the system, probably most stressful thing would be backing up HD-DVDs to x264 (not sure how stressful x264 encoding is compared to something like Prime 95?). I usually run 3-5 passes of LinX and then Prime 95 for about an hour and go from there. With my 1366 setup I ran LinX then Prime 95 for about 8 hours. Never had a socket 1155 CPU before so not sure how Prime 95 or LinX is as far as degradation on your CPU goes? Should I be more careful with this on Sandy Bridge? I read SB CPUs can fail quite often if put under too much stress?

Now onto the main issue, what temps should I be getting with my setup? and what is a realistic overclock for a 24/7 rig with this set up? When running LinX at 4.6Ghz my temps got to 90 degrees Celsius. I thought it might have been the mount so remounted and am getting basically the same temps with a 1 or 2 degrees difference on the remount. Also, one of the cores on both mounts when at 100% has a 10 degree difference. Is this normal with SB CPUs? On idle or mild loads the temps on the cores are pretty similar, but on full load Core 0 seems to be a lot cooler.

Edit : Ambient temp is about 28 degrees Celsius.

Edit 2 : Maybe I ask too many questions at once . Basically I just want to know are my temps too high for my setup? Does it sound like a mounting issue or would that be about the limits of the TRUE? I haven't tightened the pressure screw all the way as I read 70 lbs can damage the socket.

[Ice009]

No one have an opinion? I want to figure out if my temps are too high for the overclock I have.

4.5Ghz was about 1.32V as I used the auto voltage to keep the power saving features. Ambient temp about 28 degrees celsius. Temps in LinX was about 88 with this OC.

[LagunaX]

Looks like 4.5ghz is going to be your limit with that cooler.
However, linX is more of a test of cooling capacity than system stability.
Better test would be Prime95 x64 custom blend test where you custom input the ram amount, otherwise at default it is only 1.6gb of ram tested.
Say if you had 4gb I'd put in 2.5gb and if you had 8gb then 6.5gb for testing.
2 hours should be fine.

Temps should be less than 80c for everyday and preferably less than mid 80's for stress testing.
Tell us your Prime95 temps - if not too high then maybe 4.6ghz.
Try to change your overclock to "offset" voltage - it'll run a lower idle/surfing vcore (default stock vcore) and only ramp up the vcore with overclock stress.
You'll have to play around with it a little bit and see what vcore you get on cpu-z during stress testing.
Say for instance my 2500k needs an offset of 0.085v and my 2600k 0.105v for 4.8ghz for a target of 1.32-1.36v.
Turn on all of your powersaving features too - this method will allow for it.

[Ice009]

Looks like 4.5ghz is going to be your limit with that cooler.
However, linX is more of a test of cooling capacity than system stability.
Better test would be Prime95 x64 custom blend test where you custom input the ram amount, otherwise at default it is only 1.6gb of ram tested.
Say if you had 4gb I'd put in 2.5gb and if you had 8gb then 6.5gb for testing.
2 hours should be fine.

Temps should be less than 80c for everyday and preferably less than mid 80's for stress testing.
Tell us your Prime95 temps - if not too high then maybe 4.6ghz.
Try to change your overclock to "offset" voltage - it'll run a lower idle/surfing vcore (default stock vcore) and only ramp up the vcore with overclock stress.
You'll have to play around with it a little bit and see what vcore you get on cpu-z during stress testing.
Say for instance my 2500k needs an offset of 0.085v and my 2600k 0.105v for 4.8ghz for a target of 1.32-1.36v.
Turn on all of your powersaving features too - this method will allow for it.

I just did a quick 10 minute Prime 95 run right now at 4.5Ghz and temps were 71-78 (78 on the warmest core). Voltage ranged from 1.30-1.32 according to CPU-Z when Prime 95 was running.

Also, I think I already have it set to offset don't I. I have auto enabled on offset, just changed my RAM voltage and made the CPU multiplier 45, left the rest on auto as I wanted the power saving features on idle.

With using offset, even though I didn't see any high voltages in CPU-Z, is it possible that it puts in too much voltage on heavy loads when using other programs or is 1.32V the max it would apply since that is what I saw in Prime 95?

[LagunaX]

On my mobo I have to input the offset voltage.
You might not see higher temps or volts until 30-45 min in prime95.
Common crash times for prime are in the first 5 min, 12-14 min, and around the 30-50 min mark.
If your prime temps after an hour don't go past mid 80's at 4.6ghz you can probably keep it.

[Ice009]

Looks like 4.5ghz is going to be your limit with that cooler.
However, linX is more of a test of cooling capacity than system stability.
Better test would be Prime95 x64 custom blend test where you custom input the ram amount, otherwise at default it is only 1.6gb of ram tested.
Say if you had 4gb I'd put in 2.5gb and if you had 8gb then 6.5gb for testing.
2 hours should be fine.

Hey mate,

I tried the custom blend test with both 6500MB and 6000MB of RAM and keep getting an error within 5 seconds.

I put the 2600K back to stock and am still getting errors on the custom blend test. LinX and Intel Burntest both fail on stock 2600K settings too. I never actually tried it on stock when I first got it, probably should have. I posted over in another forum and a member said it could be a memory issue. I ran Memtest+ 4.20 last night and got no errors after 2-3 passes.

Really stumped at what is wrong.

What do you guys think? Should I post this over in another section of the forum?

[LagunaX]

What memory (link) are you using?
What settings (XMP, volts. etc.) are you using?

[Ice009]

What memory (link) are you using?
What settings (XMP, volts. etc.) are you using?

Using this kit http://www.gskill.com/products.php?index=355

Manually set the timings to 9-9-9-24 1T 1.5V 1600Mhz.

I've tried changing it to 2T and upping the volts to 1.58V, then even lowering it to 1333Mhz, but none of that made a difference. I also upped the Vccio to 1.15V, again no difference.

Right now I've been running Memtest86+ 4.20 all night and it's been going for 11h 25m passing 10 passes with no errors. I tried one called HCI Memtest that runs in Windows and it got errors in that, but I've never used that program before and not sure if I am using it correctly.

[LagunaX]

That's weird.
Memory sounds fine and at stock it should pass prime with no problems, IBT/linX too.
Got the latest bios for your board (though i doubt that should make any difference).
2x 4gb set, right?
Try setting XMP in the bios for the ram and then trying again.

[Ice009]

That's weird.
Memory sounds fine and at stock it should pass prime with no problems, IBT/linX too.
Got the latest bios for your board (though i doubt that should make any difference).
2x 4gb set, right?
Try setting XMP in the bios for the ram and then trying again.

I'll try the XMP profile. That's one thing I didn't try. I have the latest BIOS, but there seems to be a new one that just came out. Would faulty RAM affect a BIOS flash?

It does fail that HCI memtest if I use over 6GB of RAM. It only fails these tests if using most of my RAM. Passes everything if I don't use all the RAM.

Edit : RAM is 2 x 4GB set.

[LagunaX]

Yeah try XMP and use only 1/2 your ram.
You might have a ton of stuff running in the background using your ram...

[Ice009]

Yeah try XMP and use only 1/2 your ram.
You might have a ton of stuff running in the background using your ram...

Hey LagunaX, looks like it's the RAM.

I tried 8GB of G.Skill Sniper 1600Mhz 1.5V RAM and Prime95 blend with 6.5GB and even 7GB passed for the first time with a custom amount of RAM, LinX passed, HCI Memtest also passed. So it's the RAM for sure then right?

If you didn't tell me to try Prime95 Blend with a custom amount of RAM I may not have figured out that the problem was the RAM as it was passing Memtest86+ on an overnight run.

Also, thanks to Tsumi from Hardforum that recommended I use HCI Memtest to test the RAM. It looks like Memtest86+ is a waste of time if running it for hours and even days still does not pick up errors. What is the actual point of using Memtest86+?

One other question - Does anyone know if G.Skill require a receipt for warranty? I just downloaded the G.Skill RMA form and it asks invoice number and other details that I don't have. I bought the RAM from a trading forum and didn't get a receipt. I've RMA'd Crucial and Corsair RAM before and don't recall needing a receipt for either of those brands as they went off of the serial number.