Cooler - Zalman's CNPS9700LED is Ideal
Sometimes, we get the feeling that there are more coolers on the market than stars in the night sky. That doesn’t exactly make it easy for the normal buyer to make an informed choice. Based on our experience, we recommend the Zalman CNPS9700 LED, a cooler we have been using for over a year for all of our motherboard and processor tests.
Installing this cooler is a quick and easy process. Also, and more importantly, its cooling performance is excellent. With the fan set to medium speed using the included fan regulator, the cooler is very quiet. Thanks to its large size and its design, its airflow can also be used to cool the northbridge. We also appreciate that this cooler is compatible with all sockets currently in use. Zalman even bundles a little bottle of thermal grease and an application brush with the CNPS9700 LED.
This model was also our cooler of choice for the temperature and heat dissipation measurements.
Latest Motherboards News
Latest Motherboards reviews
- 12/01 – Seven $260-$320 X79 Express Motherboards, Reviewed
- 07/12 – Ultimate X79? Five £230+ LGA 2011 Motherboards, Reviewed
- 07/11 – Five £130 To £195 990FX-Based Socket AM3+...
- 13/10 – Man Vs. Machine: Four Automatic Overclocking Techs, Compared
- 19/09 – Round-Up: Four Z68 Motherboards From £190 To £260
so what you just said, is the newer stuff is better
i dont know why they take 10 pages to show what can be said in 1 page + a few graphs
On top of that Crysis is meant to be very cpu dependant and prefers 4 cores - it's the way things are going
Hmm, if they'd have gone for a different motherboard they could have gotten the q6600 to 3.6 on air.
Dunno if you have a duff chip or mobo. I have a Q6600 and exactly the same cooler and I can do 3.41 GHz at stock voltage on a Gigabyte 965P-DS3P.
"Its stock clock speed is 2.4 GHz, which it operates at using a comparatively low core voltage of 1.3125 Volts – the lowest core voltage available for this chip"
Wrong my Q6600 is 1.26V although it runs slightly higher in practice.
http://i152.photobucket.com/albums [...] s/Quad.jpg
I guess this shows how OC'ing can vary depending on luck. Even hand picking the best S numbers is no guarantee. A bit of luck (unless you have deep pockets) can be key.
Fortunately for myself, my Q6600 is 1.28v core, and hits 3.6GHz with only slight bump.
Indeed electron migration is a significant issue at high Vcore but realistically most of us overclocking are probably running 6-12 month cycles on our hardware (at least from my experience) and the cost of killing a mid range part every year against taking a top end part is still more cost effective.
That's given only one CPU in the past 15 that I've OC'd have failed (possibly luck?) on me and that was due to a faulty voltage regulator on my motherboard
Very nice review/test. Highly informative. I was gonna buy a 6850 or a quad core but now im just gonna grab the low cost msi board and a 6750 and spent my cash elsewhere.
question, you end up recommending the MSI motherboard, but the test system states that you used the gigabyte for the test. Will i be able to get the same clocking abilities with the MSI?