Need advice on new cpu cooler

[Shadowdust]

I recently bought an Opteron 165 to replace my old Athlon 3800 X2. The old 3800 X2 was cooled fine by my Cooler Master Hyper TX2 cooler. The Opteron on the other hand is getting mixed results. One of the cores cools quite well while under 100% load, the other not so much. On the first core, it doesn't go higher than 55 degrees Celsius with Prime95. The second core on the other hand is getting as high as 74 degrees Celsius. No matter how many times I've re-seated the cooler, my results are exactly the same. The AS5 grease is evenly coating the CPU heatspreader, so my guess is that I may need to consider a new cooler.

So I need suggestions. I have an Antec Solo mid tower atx case so it needs to be able to fit in there without clogging up it up, and I can't spend more than $40 at the moment. Due to my DFI NF4 Ultra-D board I would also like to know if a top fan cooler would be better than a side fan cooler. Thanks for your suggestions!

[HighEndToys]

As you can see here in this easy to read graph of performance, the TX2 isn't considered a great cooler.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/148...ler/index.html

This thread might help you considering your budget.

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=63505

[SirKeldon]

20 degrees of diff under load??? That's clearly over the maximum, a normal difference between core temperature's uses to be 3-6ºC with a reasonable max of 8-10ºC under load, higher than that as is your case can be dangerous for the health of the processor, maybe it's just a sensor that it's not working right or the chip is really faulty ... so IMO more than recommending you a new cooler, i'll suggest to RMA it and get one that don't exceed that range of temperature between both cores

[mon74]

My brother owns the same cooler as you do, but he swaped the original fan for a 92 mm thermaltake fan with reostat, now it performs much better, he has a 3800+ x2 overclocked to 2.9ghz and this coller works really well with the new fan.

[Shadowdust]

Originally Posted by SirKeldon

20 degrees of diff under load??? That's clearly over the maximum, a normal difference between core temperature's uses to be 3-6ºC with a reasonable max of 8-10ºC under load, higher than that as is your case can be dangerous for the health of the processor, maybe it's just a sensor that it's not working right or the chip is really faulty ... so IMO more than recommending you a new cooler, i'll suggest to RMA it and get one that don't exceed that range of temperature between both cores

Yeah, I am concerned about that. What's interesting is that during idle time, the temps are within a few degrees of each other. Usually between 33-36 degrees Celsius. As soon as I get the load to 100% that's when the massive difference becomes apparent. There's a part of me that wonders if it is the sensor though because I'm only running at 1.3 core voltage. The only reason I'm going with the heatsink first is because its the easiest step and even if it isn't the problem, at least I'll have a better cooler.

Thanks for all of your suggestions thus far. If there's any other suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them!