I was really happy with my overclocking results, but I wasn’t too thrilled with the temperature increase I was seeing with the stock CPU cooler. After much research I settled on the Arctic Cooler 7 Pro which helped dropped my core temperatures dramatically. At $22 it’s a deal for the amount of cooling that is provided.
In my previous post, I never mentioned anything about noise or fan speed because I was shooting for raw performance. The joy of having your personal jet airplane in the computer room is great for playing hardcore games, but when I’m idle there is no reason to have that thing blasting air through the system and filling the computer room with white noise.
After installing the new CPU cooler I was amazed at the difference in temperatures and since I was able to control the heat dispersion by playing with the temperature thresholds, I was able to tweak my configuration to match the demand I place on the system. My CPU speed automatically adjusts between 30 and 70% depending on temperature to keep the desired temp close to 35C. At 45C an exception occurs at the CPU fan is maxed out to 100% hopefully for a short while. The Arctic Cooler 7 keeps my CPU around a max of 40C during a Prime95 torture test.
I took this screenshot via remote desktop so the Core, which is the nvidia card, is reading 0C
The CPU temperature and speed is configured independently of the video core and system temperatures which automatically adjust my chassis fan speeds to remove hot air from the system.
Overall I would highly recommend the Arctic Cooler 7 Pro for the semi-serious overclockers out there. A temperature drop of 13C on each core over the stock Intel cooler says shows that for the money you simply can’t beat the added value of upgrading to this cooler.
