Fancy i7 cooling

[Mercutio]

The stock HSF for an i7 is frustratingly not silent, so today while I was out and about I bought a Scythe Zipang 2 cooler with a 140mm fan on it.

I'm just getting ready to take this PC down to fit it, but I was wondering if anyone else is using a non-stock cooling solution for their i5/i7 machines.

 

[ddrueding]

Both my i7 rigs use fancy coolers. Can't remember what they are exactly, but they are fanless tower-style coolers in Antec P182 cases.

 

[Mercutio]

Well, the Zipang 2 is definitely silent. It's also parallel to the plane of the motherboard, so there's no uncertainty about which position or orientation I should use for the fan. It does overhang my DIMM slots more than I'd like, but I can reach under it, so it's not a big deal.

Not bad for $35.

 

[CougTek]

I use a Xigmatek HDT-S1283 with the ACK-I5361 adapter for the LGA1156 (Core i7 860). While it's not silent, the amount of noise is fairly low and it's low frequency so less anoying. Cooling efficiency is excellent and the weight of the heatsink+fan is reasonable.

The most silent cooler I've tried was an OCZ Vendetta mounted on a Celeron D 3.33GHz. The enclosure was made of very thin metal, yet the owner couldn't hear if the system was on or off with looking at the front led.