Widescreen Gaming Forum

I am really amazed by poor performance of the stock Intel i7 cooler that came with my i7 950. When i ran the Prime95 torture test, my CPU temp reached 85C and still climbing when i decided to stop it.

I managed to get my hands on a Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme Rev.B for cheap and after installing it, i ran the torture test again. This time i got a stable 60C with all four cores running at 100%.

The difference is staggering.

Yup, stock Intel coolers suck... with the possible exception of the stock cooler that comes with the i7 980x, which is supposed to be special or sommat. I got better temps with an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro than with the stock cooler, and that is hardly a big, heavy heatsink...

I wouldn't know, I haven't used stock coolers since the second rig I ever bought :P

I normally bought CPU's as OEM's because of this. However the i5 cooler for work did well, but again...not OCing, not gaming, just sometimes number crunching for 30 seconds.

I thought i7 stock coolers come with heatpipes?

I thought i7 stock coolers come with heatpipes?

Only the Hexa-core i7's , they have this.


It's not very amazing either, but it works okay, when I tested it it was keeping my CPU at 75c with intel burn test and stock 3.3gHz

CPU's of course under water now :)

Yep, only the top-end chips come with that cooler. The rest come with the standard POS.

The thing I find shocking is that that hexacore i7 cooler is basically an Arctic Cooler Freezer 7 Pro, and yet isn't as good. I really would have thought for the cash Intel want you to drop on their hexacore chips, that they could give you a decent cooler with it... but no.

Still, it's better than the stock cooler that came with my 1090T, which let the CPU at load in Prime95 (not even LinX/IBT) get very, very close to AMDs "don't let the chip get hotter than this or you can kiss it goodbye" temp. Still, that was with the case open and minimum extra airflow, so others would have a different experience with the same CPU and cooler.

get the cooler master hyper 212 plus its awesome, and cheap.it heeps my i7 860 at 28c idle, 60c full load

What about Cooler Master Hyper TX3? Is it any good?

I just bought a coolermaster V8 I am about to see how it compares to my stock cooler.