Experienced PC builders, I need some advice. I was playing Assassin's Creed 4 and it sounds like all of my fans are running at max. I stopped playing after about 30 minutes and checked the temps and my CPU was up to 95 degC. I let it settle down and it was running at about 50 degC. I left it on overnight to run my online backup and checked it again this morning and it was sitting at 70degC. I think I need a new cooler (I've been using the stock thus far without any problems). Here's my part list. I started researching and it looks like the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO has great reviews, but I'm concerned about the size. Anybody know if it will fit in my case? Are there better options? I don't really want to move up to water cooling at this point. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks duders.

@jeff4moso:

If you want better cooling inside of your case, you might want to consider upgrading that case. The micro-ATX case you have looks like it doesn't have much airflow, and the small size probably builds up a lot of heat between your GPU and CPU on games. Computers that are built to fit inside these cases are not generally meant for gaming.

You could put in a new CPU fan and this will help a bit, but your best bet would be to upgrade your case to something that promotes more airflow and to reconsider using a contained water-cooler like the Corsair H100i (water cooling isn't supported in your current case). The thing about the H100i is that it is a contained water-cooler that sets up similarly to a CPU cooling fan - you don't need to deal with the liquids at all and at no point do you need to setup water blocks etc...

With the H100i your CPU will run a few degrees above room temperature on idle, and then add another 15 degrees or so when playing a game. At this point, you should be very careful getting your CPU up to 95 degrees. This is the DANGER ZONE! Your CPU might attempt to throttle itself so that it does not burn out, or it might even auto-shutoff at a certain point.

This is my setup with the H100i installed. You just screw it in and latch it on like a traditional CPU cooler and then screw in a radiator and fans to the top of the case. It has some unsightly fan cables that can't be managed, but it works very well. I am using the Corsair Obsidian 500r case here which is pretty affordable and has lots of airflow. It also has lots of areas to add more fans.

If you don't want to go through the hassle of rebuilding your PC in another case I'd advise getting a water cooler. They can be had for about what you'd be paying for a new case anyway. My only other concern is your GPU temps. If your GPU is running hot to then I would go ahead and get a new case.

I own a Hyper 212X which is the sucessor to the Evo with a better fan. It's really good and silent. It's not that big to be honest but can be a problem for ram cleareance. I own 2 sticks of Corsair Vengeance ram and they barely clear it because of the tall ass heatsink. Since your socket is am3 you can install the cooler either way so shouldnt be much of a problem.

I own a Phenon II X6 1100t and it was idling at 54/55º with the stock fan, now with the hyper is at a cool 34º.

Your best bet is get all the dimension specs from the manufacturers and see if theres enough room.

If you have the money, I'd go with a corsair h55 or something like that, but again, see if there's room for the radiator. But the Hyper 212 is great as well and much cheaper. Since there's a lot of heat inside your case, I'd recommend you buy a second fan and use it in push-pull configuration, they include the brackets for a second fan with the cooler.

If you have the clearance, you can't go wrong with the 212 Evo/X.

Ah, I didn't think his case supported water cooling. Looking at it again, I see that it does. He could use the Corsair Hydro H60 to fit in the case. You can install the radiator as an intake or exhaust fan and replace whatever you have currently as a fan. The H60 is only 70 bucks on TigerDirect right now, so this is the best deal and will get better performance compared to cooling fans. And yeah, if the GPU temps are up as well then a new case is needed like I said. However, I understand the intention of these cases are often for LAN setups.

After doing a little more research, I found a post on Tom's Hardware that had a similar setup. The advice was to run a different temperature monitoring program (AMD Overdrive) instead of what I'm running (CPUID). Apparently AMD Overdrive gives more accurate readings at full load. Can anyone confirm this? CPUID said that my GPU was only running at 50 degC right after I quit AC4. I believe that this is an OK temperature?

And a piece of advice, you gotta throw away that stock cooler fast. Recommended max temps for Phenom is around 65º, so you're way past that mark. Get a better fan before you fry your processor.

@jeff4moso:

Your GPU can handle high temperatures and it's even okay if it goes into the 60-70 degree range. I use RealTemp to monitor my CPU temperature, and Asus GPU tweak to monitor my GPU (came with a driver) so can't comment on other GPU monitoring programs.

@andmm: Socket is actually FM2, not AM3

@ltcoljaxson: Since my GPU temps seem OK, I don't think I need to upgrade my case. I like that my case is relatively small as it's in my living room connected to my TV. Hoping that if I run the AMD Overdrive monitor my temps will be OK. Thanks for the advice though.

@jeff4moso:

Yeah I'd just recommend the H60 water-cooler for 70 bucks. It's not much more expensive than most fans, and you'll get much better temperatures on your CPU.

I wouldnt say much better, the most common closed loop watercoolers actually run a degree or so hotter than a proper aircooler such as a noctua NH D14 or a thermalright silver arrow.The upside is that the closed loop watercooler does not weigh a metric ton, usually has a tad simpler install and does not take up as much space.

Something I just remembered and wanted to post...I swapped the front and rear fans in the case because I didn't like the blue LED fan shining in the front. The blue LED fan spins a bit faster than the normal fan. I'm starting to wonder if I swapping them back will fix this issue as I wasn't having a heating problem before. I played through Batman Arkham Origins and some Far Cry 3 with no heat problems before the swap. I guess that will be my first attempt at fixing this problem.

@jeff4moso: I own a CM Hyper 212 EVO and have it in my case right now. For an air cooler, it's amazing. vs the stock AMD cooler my CPU temps dropped from being around 60-65C under load to rarely breaking 45C under the heaviest loads. It's big but as long as you don't have some crazy tall heatsinks on your RAM or a large PSU mounted in the top of the case, you should be fine. It fits well in my machine but it's also worth noting i have a bottom mounted PSU case and no optical drives Things might get tighter if i had the optical drives but i'd just have to secure their cabling so they didn't get sucked into the fan. Hope that helps.

All in one liquid cooling is my current favourite. Sure you can get 'just as good' cooling from something like a Noctua NH-D14 but those things are ludicrous in size and I'm just not that comfortable strapping all that to a socket. All in ones an nice and clean and easy to work with, just turn the fans down to silent and away you go.

have you tried blowing in the cartridge

@jeff4moso: I built a computer for my girlfriend a few months back, Microcenter was ditching the i5 2500s for next to nothing. The case I used was tiny and the micro-ITX board I put in there took up a ton of space.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005DDCDH2/ref=oh_details_o08_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007RIFMQA/ref=oh_details_o09_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I grabbed this heatsink for it:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0080ATR2Y/ref=oh_details_o09_s00_i02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It has a very large footprint, but fit perfectly in the micro-itx board I used. It's dead silent, even when I was burning it in with Prime95. Temps in the high 60s. Idle in the high 30's.No overclocks, mind you.

I plan on building another computer for my home office and this is going to be the heatsink I use on that computer.

But first and foremost, if this problem just started happening, check to make sure your heatsink isn't loose. I haven't used AMD in a while, but Intel stock heatsinks come with the crappiest retention pegs ever. They'll pop out if you look at them wrong.

@jeff4moso: I have the Hyper 212 Evo , here it is in my case, it works quite well. I have an i7-2600K @4.8Ghz and the temps top out at about 60 celsius under heavy usage of cpu-dependant games. It can get a bit loud though.

Looking at your motherboard and case, I have 2 possible concerns:

1. Case has a top mounted power supply. From eyeballing the parts it looks like the PSU and the Evo will fit probably without running into each other.

2. The space between the CPU and the ram. Once again, from eyeballing it looks like there is probably enough space

As you can see in my photo it comes quite close to the RAM, mostly because it's not mounted perfectly straight, and it looks like there is less space on your motherboard between ram and cpu than mine. So just do a quick measurement to make sure everything will fit.

Alternatively, the h80i from Corsair is pretty nice, my friend is using it. His cpu is not oc'd and draws less power so his temps max out at about 35-40 celsius playing the same games I play. It also takes up much less space around the cpu, and is very quiet. Its fan would be mounted on the back of your case, allowing you to put your current rear fan on the side of your case.

As for your temps at 90 celsius with AC4, I'm kind of doubting the swapping of the 2 case fans in the main cause. From some searching, AC4 looks to be more CPU dependent than fc3 and arkham origins and more demanding. It also seems to utilize 1 core mostly, so I think it's pushing your cpu to the limit.

I currently am a new owner of the AMD FX 8320 CPU @Stock and I currently am using that same Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO myself and my temps are 15C on idol and around 24-26 on full load with Assassins Creed Black Flag and Battlefield 4. So I would absolutely highly reccomend this cooler, its better then most water cooling solutions out there, its quiet as well, the only problem is its size, its massive, my case is a full tower case 20 x 20 x 8" deep and it still doesn't fit, I have to have the side panel off it sits too tall inside the case, installation is a bit of a bitch as well but once its in, you will not regret it. Reason for the install being a bitch was because the instructions weren't that clear on the cross section that you screw in, it has to go in between the heat pipes and you adjust that piece with the middle screw until it all fits, was just something I haven't come across before was all.

Your stock cooler and the temps you've got, sound like your current heat sink and cooler isn't properly fitted onto the cpu, make sure there is good connection there and its on solid, doesn't move when you touch it ect...

So i bought some thermal paste and re-attached the heat sync and fan to the CPU. I still idle around 50 degC. I ran Prime95 blend test for about 30 minutes and the temp was around 80-82 degC. All of my other temperatures are perfectly fine. 80 degC seems high to me, but maybe it's acceptable under full load. Advice? Keep in mind that I'm not overclocking or anything so I would think the stock cooler should be more than acceptable for my build.

@jeff4moso: From my experience stock coolers are more or less a waste of materials for any gaming rigs, I've got one similar to this in my rig, similar design, same brand but not sure if it's the exact same model or not. Anyways its done a great job for me, and the fan is removable/replaceable if it dies on me, and it can be replaced with a standard fan when disassembled. If switching the case fans resulted in a temperature increase I would switch them back and google a guide to disable the fan LEDs if you find them to be too much.

I had a bad experience with the stock Phenom cooler as well. I replaced it with something with a bigger heat sink, probably from CoolerMaster. Water cooling is never necessary.

There is a chance that your temps will never be as high as with the Prime95, so you may be fine.

@szlifier: I am realizing that I only spent around $75 for this CPU. I'm not going to drop half that on a cooler too. It's been running fine for around 2 months with no issues so I'm going to hope it's all good. If the CPU dies, I'll worry about it then.

Thanks for everyone's advice.

My stock cooler is fine, I have a Pentium 5, thats what were up to now, 5?

and a gtx560 ti, 8gb ram, 1.5tb ssd/hdd and another 1tb black. I have a fractal case, I like the size, and weight, its big and heavy. But there is NO room in the back for my gtx to fit. I have to use a dvi to Hdmi because my hdmi cant reach the hdmi port.

Other then that it is very cool. so plus on that end.