[SOLVED] Should I upgrade stock CPU fan when upgrading to an OEM CPU?

[kylehwuzhere]

I currently have an i5 4460 with its respective stock fan. I was thinking about upgrading and buying an i7-4470, but OEM/tray without the stock of course. Should I look into upgrading the CPU fan? or will the i5 4460 stock fan do? Also in general, does the Intel CPU stock fans really correlate precisely to the CPU it comes with?

 

[Karadjgne]

No. You'll need a bigger cooling ability with any i7 vs i5 stock cooler. While TDP is pretty close in the 2 cpus, that's thermal design Power, power the cpu uses at stock. Honestly nothing to do with heat output of the cpu especially when it comes to hyperthreading usage.

Budget coolers like Corsair H60 AIO's or CM hyper212 evo or Cryorig H7 are perfect replacements and high enough wattage to handle anything the i7-4770 can dish out.

 

[TJ Hooker]

The stock cooler you would get with an non-OEM i7 4770 would be the same as the one you currently have now with your i5. So according to Intel it's sufficient. That being said, Intel stock coolers aren't great, so it may be noisy. Don't see any harm in trying it out and seeing if it bothers you enough to get a new one.

Intel stock coolers typically align with the TDP of the part they come with. Don't think I'd call it "precise" though.

 

[Karadjgne]

TDP is thermal design power. It's the averaged amount of power used by the cpu under a specific series of apps. The same test is run on all Intel cpu's, whether single core or quad core, HT or not. Measured heat output is usually within 5°± of the TDP of the cpu, so is taken as the same thing, just a different kind of watt. That said, that's at stock values under those tests, which are pretty mediocre and not thread intensive or they'd be useless for low thread cpus. You can expect far higher heat output from an i7 under high thread use than from an i5 using the same program. You could expect temps under 100% loads on that stock cooler on an i5 to be upwards of 90°C, if not throttling already. Stick that same cooler on an equitable i7, run 100% loads and expect throttling and possible shutdowns.

Intels stock coolers were designed for light-moderate pc usage, to be as cheap as possible, where loads rarely if ever exceeded 50%, just to keep pc temps @70ish°C. They were not designed for extreme usage like gaming, streaming, rendering etc for long periods of time.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Yeah, I agree, if you're going to be doing heavy multi threaded work the stock cooler probably won't cut it no matter no matter what your fan noise tolerance is unless you're OK with running your CPU at or near the throttling point. I think for typical gaming it may be ok, but possibly noisy as I mentioned above.

But I will say that I think older Intel chips were better at sticking to power draw around their TDP than newer ones are. For something like the 4770, the base clock and all core turbo clock is only 300 MHz apart, so it's plausible that power draw wouldn't be too much higher (which seems to more or less line up with what I could find from a couple reviews). Compared to say the i7 8700, where the difference is over 1 GHz, so obviously power draw balloons and TDP goes out the window under 100% load conditions, and the stock cooler can't keep up at all.

 

[kylehwuzhere]

No. You'll need a bigger cooling ability with any i7 vs i5 stock cooler. While TDP is pretty close in the 2 cpus, that's thermal design Power, power the cpu uses at stock. Honestly nothing to do with heat output of the cpu especially when it comes to hyperthreading usage.

Budget coolers like Corsair H60 AIO's or CM hyper212 evo or Cryorig H7 are perfect replacements and high enough wattage to handle anything the i7-4770 can dish out.

Hi thank you for the great advice and suggestions for new coolers, I”ll definitely look into it. I actually found out that my cooler isnt the intel stock cooler as a i presumed, but a “ aub0812vh DC12V 0.4a”. will this work if i changed out my cpu for a i7-4470? I dont mind noise, but throttling, shutdowns, etc is what i am more concerned about. thanks.

 

[Karadjgne]

Wow. That's a Delta 80mm case fan, you'd usually find them in server type cases or old AT cases as they'll top out @3600± rpm. Bring earmuffs, those puppies get loud! Great fan, Delta makes probably the best of all the high speed fans, but it's not really applicable to a home use pc and any sense of peacefulness or tranquility. Most definitely will not be an issue using it on a cpu heatsink, it's got all kinds of cfm + static pressure at those rpms, and 80mm is quite a jump in ability over the stock radial cooler fan.

I don't see a problem using it

If you do opt to shop for a quieter cooler, research your case specs. Many tower style coolers end up being too tall for many cases, especially the 140mm varients, but even a CM hyper212 is the same 160mm tall as a Noctua NH-D15S , whereas the Cryorig H7 tops out at 145mm without any ram clearance issues.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Hi thank you for the great advice and suggestions for new coolers, I”ll definitely look into it. I actually found out that my cooler isnt the intel stock cooler as a i presumed, but a “ aub0812vh DC12V 0.4a”. will this work if i changed out my cpu for a i7-4470? I dont mind noise, but throttling, shutdowns, etc is what i am more concerned about. thanks.

That's just the fan, doesn't tell us anything about the heatsink.