lol, I was going through the tweakers newsletters from the last couple of days and first thing I thought was: "Cool, it's on tweakers news". next thing I thought was: "wankers". :D

wankers @ highest level

now we need some heavy overclock comparisons

2.8 Sand Diegos with 1.7 Vcore :)

add 20°C to results. done

1.7 Vcore 2.7 Venice with less cache size is only 56°C ..... I would think SD will run as cool as Venice.

I pretty much hate you guys now :p

Before reading this, I thought I'd settle for a 7700CU. Now I have loads of contenders of which to decide from. That Scythe Shogun looks great (as well as the Ninja and the Thermaltake Sonic Tower), all in combination with a Papst 120mm, and also the Freezer64 looks great.

But I don't find any store that has any of these in stock. My preference now goes out to the Shogun/Papst combo, but it will be quite expensive... Though certainly better then an XP-120.

For you Belgians inhere: where can I buy these damned things?

Oh and before I forget: congrats on a fantastic review, it was really exactly what I needed since buying a 3000+ Venice that is now doing 2.65GHz @ stock VCore @ stock cooling with slow spinning 80mm casefans... (can get it up to 2.75 without any problem with faster spinning casefans - so with a Scythe I reckon to get 2.8GHz+ )

for Scythe, contact www.bacata.fr as they are an official distributor for Scythe in Europe, they can provide you a list with resellers closer by.

I learned that one of the PR people of Scythe moved to Germany, so we might see Scythe products in shops closer by.

Thanks. I have a few more questions:
- how would a Coolermaster Hyper6 stack up to these heatsinks (in particular to the Freezer64?) - would it be worth double the price of a Freezer64?
- would a case change a lot to the way the heatsinks perform compared to each other?

At the moment I'm thinking of going the easy route and taking a Freezer64... I reckon it would be a major leap compared to the stock A64 HSF I'm now using. But I'm still having doubts as to the brand name, in the past Arctic didn't really make very competitive coolers...

look at the results, I've included the Hyper6 =-)

changing case will always change results, it depends on amount of case fans and your PSU. Large surface HSF (like the Freezer, Hyper6, Shogun, etc) will show large benefit of a rear 120mm fan for example.

reason why I tested without a case is to have comparable results without a certain case layout playing favor for a certain HSF.

Damn, totally overlooked the Hyper6, you made the test too big ;)

I'm swinging towards a Thermaltake Sonic Tower + Papst 4412 combination now. It would cost me €54, and I don't think that anything is going to come near the price/performance ratio (I found some reviews that don't favor the Freezer64) that this setup would give me...