cooler advice for Q9550

[dpcdpc11]

hey friends... here is my question for today... a friend of mine just bought today a mobo Gigabyte ep45-ud3p and a intel Q9550 CPU and i want to buy one decent cooler that would fit into my mobo and also would not disturb the RAM memory... i was thinking of a ZEROtherm Zen FZ120 CPU Cooler which is both reliable cheap and way better than the stock one... and my question is: will this cooler fit into my mobo? because i can see it's pretty large and the mobo has 2 heatsinks on it which are pretty big... or can i find something better in the 40$ price range?? my friend is not much of an overclocker so there's no need for an expensive cooler... just one that would do the job to keep the CPU cool on a hot summer day!

thanks in advanced!

 

[papalarge123]

This Cooler should fit into the system quite nicely, as it looks like it is slightly smaller in depth (also the fan isnt as wide) than the freezer 7 pro .

The freezer pro fits nicely in most ATX systems, although can be close to the ram with heatspreaders on, but still not much of a prob, so the Zen should fit with ample of room.

although for a slight price drop, there is the freezer 7 pro, which is still quite capable in cooling an O\C Q6600 at 3.5, and the Q9550 is a cooler and faster chip.

 

[dpcdpc11]

the arctic freezer 7 pro has the plastic pins and i don't really like that fixing system... i would prefer the metal bolts like the ZEROtherm which i think would fix in place the cooler even better!
still waiting for more suggestion...

 

[theaquatic]

I just put a system together using the same components and I used a Xigmatek HDT-S1283 plus their retention bracket which uses bolts. It fit perfectly fine. I've had it up and running for a few days, but temps are hanging around 30C idle and 49C after 8 hours of Prime95. This is with the chip OC'd to 3.4, although I'm still sorting the OC out.

 

[dpcdpc11]

eventually i bought the F120 for my Q6600 as well... overclocked it to 2.8Ghz and now my temps are like this:
IDLE
core1: 33
core2: 33
core3: 30
core4: 35

LOAD
core1: 50
core2: 48
core3: 47
core4: 52

my case is **** btw... it's an old midi tower with both the face and one side door removed... and zero case fans... should i maybe buy a couple of 120mm case fans and install them? would that make a big difference on the components??