Silent Knight 2 Cooler and 8 Core Chip?

[witsend2]

Hi there,

I'm currently considering upgrading my Athlon II 640 (quad core) to an 8320 or 8350, but heard that the stock cooler that comes with those chips isn't very good. At the moment, I'm using an Asus Silent Knight 2, which I've been very happy with. My question is - when I get the new chip, would I be better using the Silent Knight 2 again, or using AMD's stock cooler?

On Asus's website, it says the SK2 is specifically made for quad core processors, and that an earlier version (the SK1) is specifically for dual core processors. Do the number of cores really matter when the point of contact is flat anyway? Will the Silent Knight 2 be good enough to cool the new chips?

 

[Guest]

That cooler appears to be quite the chunky monkey. Bigger is always better for coolers.

Honestly, you could put your pc case sideways and take a royal dump on the socket to get better cooling that the stock heatsink. The rigid tendencies of the turd will aid in heat dissipation.

In all seriousness, it may not be a great cooler by today's standards, but it's sure to hell to beat the stock one. As far as I know the mounting mechanism is the same across AM sockets, but you may want to read up on if that cooler can mount to AM3+.

The whole dual/quad thing is more of a marketing gimmick. Heatsinks don't care what's underneath, they just dissipate heat. While it's true, more cores usually means more heat, the better way of measuring is just straight up looking at it. Or TDP rating (rarely used unfortunately, only BeQuiet seem to like that).
The more fins, fans, size, heatpipes etc... the merrier. At the end of the day, heatsinks have and presumably always will be large chunks of metal - Something that doesn't really change all that much generation to generation.


I looked on the ASUS page for that cooler and came across this in the specifications section:
CPU Support: AMD Phenom™ FX/X3/X4.

I'm not sure if there actually was a Phenom FX chip, or if they're referring to the current FX chips and misplaced the branding.
Either way if it will do an adequate job on a 965 (Phenom II X4) then I'm sure it will be fine for the 8320/8350.
Overclocking headroom will depend entirely on how your temps look when you put it on there, being an older cooler I doubt there will be many if any places on the web that it's used in a result.

A nice comparison on the page is between the Intel stock cooler. Which hasn't seemed to change all that much for a long time. While Intel chips generally have a lower TDP, even the older ones. It does give some indication of how it will fair.


Go for it. Look at the temps, they should be fine but if they aren't, then yes a new cooler would be advised.

 

[witsend2]

Awesome, thanks! I'll give it a bash with the old cooler and see how it does.