i570 owners- largest / most effective CPU cooler/heatsink confirmed to fit our cases?

Are you using their fan or the dell fan? aka does it have fan failure using stock fan vs 3rd party or no?

This is passive cooling so a fan on the side with ducting to the fan may be an option to get better cooling.

Even Passive Side vents seem to be all the rage now.

DEEPCOOL - CPU Cooler - ALPHA 400 ST

DEEPCOOL ALPHA 400 ST -

LGA775 with 4 heatpipes.

I wish Dell was making cases like this - I am and OC are thinking how to make more openings in our cases, lol.

LOL @ kisianik- I already have the answer for HOW to do it, I just need to figure out if there will still be a purpose to even having the side panel on afterward. :emotion-40:

120mm fan blowing directly into the heatsink/CPU area should work quite well for around 40 bucks! 

I am dead serious that I might either try that, or remove the factory grill and put a 120mm fan retrofitted into the area where the 92mm case fan sits now....

Cooling is important, but I think there is a limitation as far as what you can do with a Dell case.  This is why I changed my Inspiron over to a new case 2 years ago.  I have a 140mm fan on the side panel (intake), 120mm in back (exhaust), 120mm on top (exhaust) & 120mm in the front (intake) all on a fan controller.  Even running full speed the fans are quiet.  The mid-size ATX cases are still much larger than the small Inspiron cases which gives you much more room for larger heatsinks.  The entire case is much more roomy and has an open mesh design on the front and top with filters.  I just would not bother modifying a Dell case expecting to get big drops in your temperatures.  Mine would be cooler than it is if I didn't have it stuck inside of a compartment. 

@OC: How you planning to cut a hole in the side panel?

@Kelbear1: did you just moved all your hardware from i570 to CoolerMaster case?

@kisianik- I plan on using a dremel, but I'm not sure what sort of bit to use. I'm going to consult the guys in Hardware at Home Depot as to what is used for cutting angles in sheet metal typically. Thankfully the bracket makes it okay to be less than perfect and still have it look perfectly done when finished.

I also think you should get a heads-up about my new CPU cooler you might want to try out. It's dropped my temps to 59C max during the OCCT test, and that's only 12 hours after installing it with Arctic 5- so I still have 188 more hours of improvement while the compound settles and I'm already about -3C from the previous unit.

Best part? It cost $23 shipped, has a nice secure screw design with heavy metal rear bracket, and takes up less space than any of the CPU coolers I've used (about the same as stock). The worst part? The screws seem to be a different size than the factory bracket is meant to accept, so I did have to remove the mobo and swap the two. It was well worth it so far though. It beat the DeepCool with thermal pipes that cost twice as much, so I give this an A++

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@Kelbear1: did you just moved all your hardware from i570 to CoolerMaster case?

I moved most of my hardware over such as CPU, ram, power supply, hard drive, optical drives, etc.  However, I did purchase a new motherboard and CPU heatsink. This was done with an i530 not an i570.  The motherboard was $75, case was $75 and heatsink/fan was $30 so it was a $180 upgrade cost. 

Thanks for responding Kelbear1, getting new case and new MOBO makes new PC basically - this is too much now, in the beginning it was probably acceptable time loss, but not now.

@OC: I run OCCT just one more time to see my current temperatures with my final setup. Oh well, 1 hour automatic with OCCT test max temperature hit was 56C, running now OCCT Linpack about 52C now. As I mentioned before, OCCT is the test which was a bit harsher than Crysis 2 on my system, BF3 now about the same (well GPU is hitting hard, but ok). If you really into stressing your system run Prime95 or if you are like to inflict pain upon yourself run IntelBurn (worst of them all). I passed worst IntelBurn configuration test with 63C before. So now your present setup is actually step down from my current setup. It is funny in some way - you spent so much time trying to find CPU cooler with screws attached, including removing Dell backplate - you could easily go my way: get screws which fit Dell backplate and get strong cooler and see this way, I did so and so far I am beating your setup with my first and the only one choice, if I knew about Arctic 13 coller before probably my results would be even better!

@Kisianik- oh man, swapping screws with a better cooler would have been less of a headache. This thermaltake cooler is nice and all in terms of keeping the temp safe, but it's a PWM setup and the higher speeds sound like a jet engine is landing near my desk. I am returning it today.

Those are nice temps, but I bet that I have them beat by Tuesday of next week. I have my secret weapon in the CPU cooling battle finally on its way- I had to email the tech support for the company to confirm it would fit, then measure the space inside of my tower to the millimeter to make sure, but I bet I run low to mid 50's max on the OCCT hour test. :emotion-11: Haha I never intended for this to turn into a competition, but at least that is keeping it fun as opposed to being just another headache to fix with the system! Oh yeah... I also search forever, and I found a 55 CFM single-speed fan that is only rated at 31dB noise level and wasn't $30.... lol. So I'm replacing the rear exhaust whenever that arrives. 

PS- I am curious what your entire rig scores in the long version of the Passmark test, both individual subscores and the composite "system score" it gives. I'm not trying to see if either of us can one-up the other in terms of performance, but actually I just would like something to measure my progress against. Either way, I think we have the #1 and #2 setups left with the original mobo inside the dell case. :emotion-21:

I would have to install Passmark back, since I have evaluation version only, however your numbers are higher than mine even for CPU for what ever reason. I am happy with whatever I have now due to the ability to play BF3 as it was intended to do so. Making 570 run a bit faster would not change much in gaming sense, so I would do some changes if I find any real improvement (if I find the way to overclock processor, but this is very unlikely) directions (I wish I upgraded my CPU first and then Video card, no I did other way around, too late now), plus my finances are limited at this time. I did a bit more investigation and found out that Phenom II x4 970 BE would most likely work here, but nothing above this model, it is a long story, can explain my line of thought if necessary.

P.S. By the way, which Video card you have 6670 or 6770, I thought you bought 6670, but your signature shows 6770

Yeah, I just have the trial version too. I don't know if I'll buy the full or not- I guess it depends on if I'm still changing things around when the thing is expired in about a week. I have no doubt you can play BF3 without trouble- I know one person who has a stock X2 270 processor and with only a HD 5450 for a GPU and he still somehow plays it. I can only imagine what the quality of that experience must be like though. lol. About the CPU score being higher- I realized that the more you unload the CPU's work onto the GPU, the faster benchmark from the X4. 

I had the 6670 to start out with and realized that I was WAY too slow from the bottleneck at the graphics card. So, I returned that and got the 6770 card, (which is a MONSTER in weight and size).... that brought my numbers up a ridiculous amount. Now I decided that I'm going to change it one final time, because I'm moving and am going to have a 32" screen paired with my current LED monitor. I have the 6850 being delivered tomorrow, and then I'm sending back the 6770. (**this is why it's worth getting amazon prime- they won't give you any trouble for whatever return you want within 30 days unless you broke the item**)  Anyway, the 6850 is a 256-bit card with an output for all four- HDMI, DVI, VGA, and Displayport. I can't wait to see 1) if I can actually get the HDMI and DVI running smoothly at the same time, and 2) what a 50% increase in my GPU's benchmark will do for the overall system.

I think I might know what you are getting at with the X4 970 comment- I know there is a limitation to how fast our board is physically capable of utilizing the CPU- I actually read this was calculated to be maxed out with anything over the X4 955, but who knows. It's all hypothetical until someone tries it. I almost want to pop a 960T into the computer and see if the different core architecture and "turbo" function let it run near the same speed as our 965's. If you know of something else that stops our systems at the X4 970BE, let me know!

It's funny, I have so many extra parts sitting around from this project, all I need is a case and motherboard and I can have a computer running an Athlon X3 455 with a GeForce 8400 GS card and 8gb of DDR3 RAM all set to drop in. The price of a mobo is so freaking high for a card that could run those components though, it's just not worth doing right now. Maybe I can get lucky and find someone selling a "dead" Inspiron desktop that uses an AM3 socket....

PS- if you REALLY wanted to see a funny benchmark, you should have seen when I tried turning compression on with my SSD. The "write" speed went down to <2mbps, but the "read" speed went up to >1700mbps!!! I scored 6000+ on the disk section of the test and that boosted me to nearly 3000 for the system. Too bad that configuration was almost entirely unusable in real life. :emotion-2:

I think I might know what you are getting at with the X4 970 comment- I know there is a limitation to how fast our board is physically capable of utilizing the CPU- I actually read this was calculated to be maxed out with anything over the X4 955, but who knows. It's all hypothetical until someone tries it. I almost want to pop a 960T into the computer and see if the different core architecture and "turbo" function let it run near the same speed as our 965's. If you know of something else that stops our systems at the X4 970BE, let me know!

How much our motherboard can tolerate is one question, another one is BIOS, latest bios was manufactured around November 2010, so all processors released prior to this time are included, and all after are not, that simple. 975 was made in 2011 or very late 2010, so it is not included in BIOS, so it would be unknown CPU, including all other problems, this simple, and no one here noticed this, at least in writing. Everyone talk about speed, etc. Well 965 should be about as 945 then, since someone mentioned somewhere that 570 is max out at 945. The problem is cheap simple BIOS, which can not be unlocked, I found some cracker forum where they were thinking about cracking BIOS, but did not see any developments.

That makes sense with the BIOS not knowing what to do with a processor that didn't exist when it was written. I always wondered if the AM3 chips that came after the Phenom would work if they were dual or quad core architecture, but it sounds like all of it would just be "unrecognized".

Then again... I read somewhere that if you unlock the 4th core on a X3 455 on most computers, most of the time it reads it as being an entirely different AMD X4 Phenom CPU when you go into system properties. Maybe there is a chance it would just assume a Phenom X4 after the 970 would just be the most similar chip it's been programmed for?

Well the highest Phenom II x4 is 980, the gain is not so great, considering that for me at least I will stuck with 965 collecting dust, if you have time to return it  - try, be the first one, like I was sometime ago. However X6 would not be recognized for sure, first someone tried already and reported "UNKNOWN CPU" in BIOS, second, at the time of last BIOS production there were no X6 around yet, I think.....

@OC: I run OCCT just one more time to see my current temperatures with my final setup. Oh well, 1 hour automatic with OCCT test max temperature hit was 56C, running now OCCT Linpack about 52C now. As I mentioned before, OCCT is the test which was a bit harsher than Crysis 2 on my system, BF3 now about the same (well GPU is hitting hard, but ok). If you really into stressing your system run Prime95 or if you are like to inflict pain upon yourself run IntelBurn (worst of them all). I passed worst IntelBurn configuration test with 63C before. So now your present setup is actually step down from my current setup. It is funny in some way - you spent so much time trying to find CPU cooler with screws attached, including removing Dell backplate - you could easily go my way: get screws which fit Dell backplate and get strong cooler and see this way, I did so and so far I am beating your setup with my first and the only one choice, if I knew about Arctic 13 coller before probably my results would be even better!

Well, I just installed my new cooler two days ago and am still hesitant to run the full hour test before I let the A5S compound set for at least a week, but I did run a 30-minute test to see how it would do without having installed my incoming upgraded case fan. I was happy to see the results below:

The official max was 56C, but I added the blue line to show where 55C is on the chart- so about 90% of the time, it was below that temperature. Right now it's back down to idle at 32C while I type this post. Man, the difference between having a "flat" style CPU cooler with the air blowing down onto the processor vs having a "tower" style with the fan blowing across the heatsink and then directly into the exhaust fan is HUGE. This shows a good improvement in the max cooling of the two designs, but the real difference is with the heat generated during moderate (<50% cpu) computing. I've yet to push it past 40C under those real-life conditions. 

Oh yeah, I guess I should reveal my new favorite part of the computer:

DeepCool IceEdge 400 XT! It's $24 shipped on Amazon, is rated for up to 200w, runs silent as a mouse, and is an easy fit inside our case with the stock (or included aftermarket) screw bracket. :emotion-2:

I've thought about even adding the second fan to make it a push/pull configuration- it comes with a second set of wire brackets to hold a 92mm fan on the other side.