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Old 09-05-2007, 02:10 PM   #27
CubicleGeek
Scoring Winger
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
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You really don't need an aftermarket fan unless you're a) planning to overclock and/or b) looking for the bling factor for a side view case. You get zero benefits otherwise and it's $40 you can put somewhere else. On the topic of overclocking, even the stock fan overclocks very well. I've ran my E6600 for about 6 months at 3.2 GHz (from 2.4 GHz) on stock cooling.

A word of caution concerning liquid cooling. Research what you're getting into as in additional to extra cost, there are additional maintenance steps (i.e. system flushs every 6 months) and other points of failure you have to consider, such as if the pump goes, you will lose cooling on your entire loop, which could mean losing cooling to multiple components (assuming your loop consists of cooling more than just your CPU). But aside from other forms of extreme cooling such as phase or liquid nitrogen there is nothing that cools better than water and there is no active solution that is as quiet as it either. There's also the coolness factor.
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