AMD FX Cooling Recommendations

[Johan45]

20° is nothing to sneeze at! Looking good. My only concern would be the VRM's. Now that you have the Antec in there you're going to have very limited airmovement in that socket area. Typically with an aircooler you'd have the turbulance swirling around down ther but that's gone. I had that issue when I first went with the TT AIO cooler. I also had the M5A 99FX pro board. The combination was putting my socket temps about 20° higher than my cores.
If this happens then your board is going to throttle that CPU to keep the VRM's cooler.

 

[Roph]

I've thought about perhaps flipping the top case fan so it's sucking air in rather than blowing it out. Or perhaps putting it down in the front of the case, again sucking in.

 

[Johan45]

If you don't have a fan in the front I'd put it there any way. Having that open grille will let the cooler pull cool air in right from the top. What can help, I know it'll sound hackish but take a 50mm chipset fan and some two sided tape and stick it right on the mosfets. Also if you have a cutout behind the cpu in the mobo tray you can put a small fan there. I stuck one right on the cooler bracket back there

 

[Roph]

Ordered these for now

 

[Roph]

Heatsinks arrived; just so I don't mess it up, it is these components that get toasty, right?

I don't want to put them on the wrong thing

 

[d1nky]

yea theyre the ones that get hot and need cooling!

be careful not to make any shorts/contacts!#

that fan see if you can put spacers or something so that the fan is tilted towards the vrms drawing more air straight from socket and vrms.

i.e take the screws out closest to side (towards you) loosen the other two, tilt it facing the vrms. use longer screws or something to lock the space/gap and then tighten. it helped on my fx4100 rig, with the vrm heatsinks!

 

[Roph]

After measuring, there's plenty of clearance all around on the copper sinks, and they have pre-applied pads on the bottom.

And I hope you don't mean that fan on the left, there's a radiator stuck to it with another fan on the other side of that

I leave the top fan spinning (exhaust) and I have intake at the bottom front, there's noticeable airflow around there. Added with that I'm not going to overclock much, I'll be fine.

 

[d1nky]

And I hope you don't mean that fan on the left, there's a radiator stuck to it with another fan on the other side of that

LOL couldnt see that!

good luck man!

 

[Roph]

Well, I've been running for a week or so now with it all setup, pretty nice

I was concerned at first that they might not stay stuck there due to the potentially high heat from the VRMs, but if anything the heat seems to have strengthened the bond. I tried removing one to test and I gave up out of fear that I was going to pull the chip underneath off with it.

I also taped up the little gaps between the fans and the radiator, except for the ones on the bottom, facing the VRMs. I can just get a pinky finger in there, and there's some noticeable airflow coming (or leaking) from the push/pull fans down there. I'm happy

 

[d1nky]

LOL when i modded my vrms on my other board i felt the same.

especially as if they fall they will fall on the gpu, and they wasnt light lil things.

yea the glue sets like a rock. i used a blade to get mine off

 

[wiak]

At my Fx I use Noctua NH-D14, but it have a premium price, so you must tell us the amount of money you want to spend on cooling...

i upgraded to a NH-U9B SE2 and the temp dropped over ~10c less on load compared to stock on my FX-8350, i have also tested a H60 watercooling unit and that was hotter than the stock at 70c+ on load (must be a faulty unit)