Top-down cooler

zellett

Distinguished
Apr 3, 2008
26
0
18,530
Does anyone have any suggestions as to what the best cpu heatsink is that blows down onto the motherboard. The fan is parallel to the motherboard rather than perpendicular. Like the stock intel heatsink. I realise these don't perform as well in general, but my system stays cool enough with the stock HSF, so I can afford to sacrifice a little performance so that I don't have to have a behemoth of a heatsink right in the middle of my case.

I've heard that the cooler that comes with the extreme editions are quite a lot better that the other stock coolers, but none of the online stores carry even the stock intel coolers anyway. Does anyone know if I can even buy that style without the processor? Are there any reviews that have a section dedicated to these kinds of HSFs?
 
you can buy the stock Intel HSF on ebay i sure people will like to make a few quid from their junk!

take a look at the Zalman's collection. there are one or two that does the similar design but much more efficient and powerful.
 
A few minutes on Newegg reveals several heatsinks of the type your looking for. Also, frostytech had like a top 10 heatsink list, and there were 3 or 4 on that list that had downward blowing fans.
 


I question their results when the Ultra 120 is higher than the 120 Extreme. Every review I've ever seen has put the Extreme ahead of the Ultra 120.

I just looked and it states at the bottom "*Heatsinks are ranked according to the lowest rise in ambient temperature on Frostytech thermal test platform"

Rise in ambient temp not lowest maximum temp of the CPU?
 
The Scythe Andy is supposed to be pretty good, along with the Asus Triton. I personally picked the ZEROtherm CF800, fan throttles itself, which keeps my temps higher than I would like, but still works I guess.