Q6600 Asus P5k-E Cooling

[balarila]

Beware: I'm a newbie.

I'm finally settling down into a Q6600 and Asus P5k-E with 8gb RAM, two 750gb drives. Will be using the PC to process photos (not gaming). I may overclock. Now the real newbie questions:

1. Does the Q6600 or the mobo come bundled with a cooling fan? If so, is it any good?

2. If I overclock, I assume I need some good cooling (I live in the tropics). What would be the cheapest you'd recommend?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Evilonigiri]

1.) If you buy a retail Q6600, then it should come with a cooler. The cooler itself is pretty good for cooling at stock speeds. It's also pretty quiet, so if you are not going to OC, stock cooling is excellent.

2.) You'll need better cooling, especially for the cpu. The Xigmatek HDT S-1283 is one of the best cooler for the price, which is around $38. Another good cooler is the Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7, which is around $25. It doesn't cool as well, but if you're looking to do some moderate OCing, it may be your best bet.

 

[Night-Stalker]

Depending on how much you OC, evilonigiri is right but if you are gonna try and push it near max i would recommend Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme, i don't personally own it but its one of the cpu heat sinks out there once equipped with a decent 120mm fan.

 

[jeremyrailton]

the xigmatek is just as good and comes with a fan

 

[Lupiron]

 

[balarila]

Last build I did was about 1-8yrs ago when drives were still IDE, SDRAM and AGP was just coming out and slots just became PCI. I'm sure I'll have to do a lot of catching up just building it.

So, frankly I don't know how much I'll OC yet. I guess I'll buy the retail version and run it stock. Then, when I've ironed out all the kinks of my build, I'll think about OC.

Since I'll use rig for photo processing, I need fast processing power and lots of fast storage but not a lot of graphics processing.

I'll also be playing around with raid down the line.

Thanks for the help!

BTW, I plan to order my stuff from ewiz.com but noticed they don't declare if their Q6600 is the G0 or B3 version. Would anyone know which one they sell or should I source elsewhere? Newegg would've been great but, because I'm shipping to CA, I'll get hit with sales tax.

 

[Lupiron]

::chuckles.:: You may wanna get a "OEM" or Tray chip. All the retail boxes lately have been High VID chips.

Heed my warning, oh young one!

--Lupi!

 

[Lupiron]

Or Negotiate with me for one of my 7 chips! Since you plan on paying retail anyways, I have this nice and almost new G0 1.25000 VID chip just waiting for someone special, and not E Bay! They get my high VIDs!

Hehehe! 😉

--Lupi!

 

[MadHacker]

something also to consider when purchasing a heat sink for your CPU.
some involve removing your motherboard. some don't.
So if you want to go with stock cooling and then change it may mean removing your board witch would add to the work involved.

my 2¢