Budget CPU Coolers Reviewed

Hey everyone, In this post I am going to be taking a look at some of the cheaper CPU coolers and heatsinks that are currently on the market. I will be including Specs of each of the Coolers and also if I can find any temperature comparisons online then I will put them in as well.

Xilence XilentBlade Pro

The Xilence XilentBlade pro is one of the cheapest performance heatsinks that is available on the market today. It can cool CPU's upto the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 and the AMD Phenom x3 8750. It costs just under £15 ($25) and looks very well built. It has 6 large heatpipes and that fan that is included can move 36cfm of air which means that it will cools most CPU's very well. The design is pretty boring to be honest and just has a huge square block of aluminum fins and a Red and Black fan attached to it so nothing too fancy. Overall I would think that this cooler would be brilliant for cooling Dual Core CPU's that use under 95w of power and for £15 who can complain? Great cooler by Xilence. This cooler can be used on Sockets 775, 1366, AM2, AM2+ and AM3.
This cooler can be found here - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176093

Xilence XilentBlade Pro

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
This CPU cooler design has been around for ages and has earned it self a lot of praise from overclockers over the last couple of years. Arctic has really managed a great budget cooler with this design and you can pick one up for around £15 just like the Xilence XilentBlade. This cooler can be used on Sockets 775, 1156, 1366, AM2, AM3. It has 6 heatpipes and 42 fins for optimal cooling performance and can cool CPU's up to 130w which means pretty much every CPU made currently. It has a 92mm fan on the front of it which is mounted on rubber mounts to stop vibrations. The fan can push 45cfm which is pretty impressive. Overall Arctic cooling has done a very good job at making a Budget CPU cooler and I am very impressed with the quality of this as well as I have used on before.
You can find this CPU here - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176157

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro

Zalman CNPS7000C-CU Super Flower
The Zalman CNPS700C-CU is a bit of an out of date design now. I remember having one that was cooling my Athlon XP CPU ages ago. This one looks pretty much exactly the same only it fits different sockets. It will fit the following CPU sockets; AM2, AM2+, AM3, 754, 939, and 940, 775, 1156, 1155 This Cooler features 2890sq/cm of surface area which means that it has a lot of surface to dissipate heat. I couldn't find out how much CFM the fan pushed even on the Zalman website so I can't really make much of a judgement on this cooler to be honest. Overall it is a little outdated now but if you have a computer with maybe a 754 or 939 motherboard then this is still a perfectly good option.
This cooler can be found here - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/153203

Zalman CNPS7000C-CU Cooler

Inno3D iChill XXXX
Inno3D isn't a well known cooler manufacture, They are more specialized at producing cheaper graphics cards. However when I saw this cooler I was amazed that they could produce it so cheap and yet have such good specifications. There are  the specs of this cooler;

Max. Air Flow - 45CFM
Noise - 23-39dB
TDP Limit - 140W
Intel: i7 / i5 / i3 / Socket 1366 / 1156 / 1155/ 775
AMD: Socket AM3 / AM2+ / 939

As you can see from the specifications it has a high flow fan and can cool CPU's up to 140w which is very good. It also has 6 heatpipes to aid heat dissipation from the CPU. Overall this cooler is very good for £17 and it looks like it would do a very decent job of cooling every CPU available today.
This Cooler can be found here - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/244150

Inno3D Ichill XXXX

Overall there are various coolers that would most likely do a good job at cooling your CPU and for under £20, I was amazed at what I found. I would recommend the Inno3D iChill and the Arctic Cooling above the others but those are still capable CPU coolers anyway so there is no need to say they are not good because they are. All great designs and all aimed at the budget market.

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ASUS P8Z68-V Pro Z68 Chipset Motherboard Review

When Intel brought out the P67 and H67 chipsets, many enthusiasts complained that the features of one or the other were only available on one or the other, but not both. Intel has heard the community and is therefore launching the Z68 chipset. As usual ASUS is among the first board makers to offer a board featuring this latest chipset. The ASUS P8Z68-V Pro promises to be an interesting first look at this new chipset

Introduction

You’ve probably owned ASUS built products without even knowing it. It makes everything from motherboards to monitors, to consumer electronics, and more. Founded in 1986 ASUS has become one of the largest consumer electronics manufacturers in the world and is probably the largest motherboard manufacturer on the planet, surely when it comes to retail box packages.
The ASUS P8Z68-V Pro is based on Intel’s brand new Z68 Express chipset. Less than six months ago Intel launched two chipsets. P67 and H67.

The former was targeted towards mainstream and some enthusiast users. This chipset offered the ability to overclocked multiplier unlocked K series parts with impunity. At least, through turbo multipliers. The H67 chipset on the other hand featured support for Intel’s Integrated Graphics Processors, or IGPUs which are part of the Sandy Bridge core processors’ dies. Furthermore Intel’s quick sync feature was tied to H67 and anyone who might have wanted to take advantage of these features had to choose between using the IGPU’s and Quick Sync or overclocking. This didn’t sit well with many enthusiasts and of course, many people made their opinions on this well known. Well if Z68 proves anything, it’s that Intel has been listening. No longer must you choose between the feature sets of P67 and H67. You can now have both feature sets and more. And when we say "more" there is a LOT more.

Read More - http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/05/11/asus_p8z68v_pro_z68_chipset_motherboard_review

ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 Review

In terms of the 890GX and SB850 this motherboard is packed with features. This motherboard includes USB 3.0, eSATA, Core Unlocking, 1394 Firewire, Dual 16x Graphics slots and gloss blue aluminum coolers to help keep the chipset and VRM's at a stable temperature. This board also features on-board graphics using the HD4290 graphics chip. This graphics chip is no way a gaming chip but it is a lot better than some of the graphics that Intel are using on their boards. This board also makes use of 128mb DDR3 sideport memory to help speed up the on-board graphics. You can also use the onboard video as support for a discrete graphics card in what AMD call Hybrid CrossfireX mode. However unless the discrete card was slow itself then this would probably not offer much of a performance boost anyway. This board features 8+2 power phase. This will not mean much to most people that want to just use their computer but any one that is into a bit of overclocking will notice that this arrangement is more stable than lower phase power circuits. Another great feature that ASUS has included is the ASUS Express Gate. This is a mini operating system that the motherboard loads into if you want to just quickly check your email or have a quick look at something on the internet. This feature works really well as it loads a lot faster than a windows operating system. This board is also capable of running the quad and hex core CPU's that AMD are offering at the moment so you will not be short of power with this board.

This is the architecture that the 890GX Chip-set Uses

In conclusion ASUS has delivered a very high quality feature rich board for a the small price of £99.99 which is very much worth it. The only problem that I found with this board is the lack of a PS2 mouse port.

www.customdesktops.moonfruit.com