do all cpus come with fans attached?

Piscium

I am considering building my own PC. In the past I have upgraded RAM and installed a hard disk, so I am not particularly scared about building a PC, with one exception: applying the thermal paste and attaching the heat sink to the CPU. I did a bit of tiling at home, and to say that I did a poor job is an understatement!

I looked at the CPUs currently for sale at Komplett and Elara. All the AMD CPUs are PIB (processor in the box), and the Intel CPUs are also "boxed". Does that mean that all AMD and Intel CPUs already come with a heat sink attached so I don't need to bother with thermal paste? And do they also come with a fan attached?

Basically I would like to build a reliable PC with a minimum of fuss (and risk), probably 4 core, and I am not planning to do any overclocking.

Playsatan

Most stock CPU coolers have the thermal paste already applied so you dont need to worry about spreading and making good contact. It was more of a gel on my one and wasnt packaged in an air tight container, so dont worry about it drying out before its put on or if you have to take off the cooler several times.

If you are looking for a cheap quad core I would recommend the AMD athelon 620/640, last time I checked, komplett were selling it for €90.

As for the rest of the build, keep in mind that this wont be as easy as you would think. Have an idea as to what you want this computer for and then increase the requirements by about 50% so that it can be somewhat "future proof". That way, if you change your mind or some new program/game comes along, you dont need to worry if you can handle it.

Make sure that your motherboard and CPU are compatible. This makes everything a whole lot easier if something goes wrong (and trust me, it will ).

Lastly, when buying online look at big websites like newegg.com or amazon (US and UK versions) so that you can see what other people thought about the component and what they did with it.Using this, I could tell if my motherboard / CPU combo was a good idea and any issues other people faced.


Anything else I missed ?

tman

Playsatan wrote: »

Anything else I missed ?

Just the original question...
"Boxed" = comes with fan and thermal paste already applied
"Stock" doesn't

Playsatan

:P

Shhh . . . Its early . . .

tman

Didn't really answer it properly myself actually:p
"AMD Processor in a Box (PIB)" definitely comes with a fan as well
If they came without a fan they'd be listed as WOF

Piscium

Guys, thanks for the answers.

My current PC (Dell Dimension) has a big plastic "pipe" (actually with square cross-section) that goes from the top of the CPU heat sink to the case, where the CPU fan is attached.

If I buy one of these new "boxed" CPUs that have a heat sink and fan attached for a new PC, do I need to get a "pipe" at all? Or do I just need to make sure that the CPUs on the new case can take enough hot air out?

Something I dislike about my current Dell is that the CPU fan is very loud, in particular when the room temperature goes above 22C. What about the fans that come with AMD and Intel CPUs? Are they quiet enough?

Deano12345

Piscium wrote: »

Something I dislike about my current Dell is that the CPU fan is very loud, in particular when the room temperature goes above 22C. What about the fans that come with AMD and Intel CPUs? Are they quiet enough?

The stock Intel HSF runs at about 37 dB if I remember rightly.From first hand use,its not that loud

dun79

Hi Piscium

that green plastic thing in the dell is a very bad and noisy way to cool a cpu + case.

If you build a pc the cpu (get a PIB or boxed CPU) it will have a heatsink and fan, the case will have an exhaust fan at the back. some cases have fans at the front and top aswell.

uberpixie

Piscium wrote: »

Guys, thanks for the answers.

My current PC (Dell Dimension) has a big plastic "pipe" (actually with square cross-section) that goes from the top of the CPU heat sink to the case, where the CPU fan is attached.

If I buy one of these new "boxed" CPUs that have a heat sink and fan attached for a new PC, do I need to get a "pipe" at all? Or do I just need to make sure that the CPUs on the new case can take enough hot air out?

Something I dislike about my current Dell is that the CPU fan is very loud, in particular when the room temperature goes above 22C. What about the fans that come with AMD and Intel CPUs? Are they quiet enough?

The "pipe" is a design feature of the way Dell setup some of their PCs. This allows them to get away with only using one fan in the entire case.

Typical case design would be to a number of intake fans @ the back of a case with exhaust fans at the back of the case. This allows cool air to flow through the case cooling the internal parts.

As long as you get a good case with some fans: heat will not be an issue.

What case are you getting?

Solitaire

Deano12345 wrote: »

The stock Intel HSF runs at about 37 dB if I remember rightly.From first hand use,its not that loud

Only if its the light version that comes with C2Ds and P4 Celerons! The "normal" version that comes with older P4s, C2Qs and i3/i5 is a bit noisier. The version that comes with Netburst P4s, Pentium Ds and i7s usually has a copper core and is bibilically awful for both noise and cooling

Deano12345

Solitaire wrote: »

Only if its the light version that comes with C2Ds and P4 Celerons! The "normal" version that comes with older P4s, C2Qs and i3/i5 is a bit noisier. The version that comes with Netburst P4s, Pentium Ds and i7s usually has a copper core and is bibilically awful for both noise and cooling

Yeah,my old P4 cooler was loud as a 747.The E2200's not so much,and I've never used my C2Q one lol

Piscium

Guys, thanks for the helpful answers.

My PC is a 5.5 year old Dell Dimension 3000. I think that where I went wrong was that instead of choosing the default CPU, which as far as I remember was a Celeron 2.4 GHz, I chose a more powerful one, Pentium 4, 3 GHz. So I think Dell just threw in a bigger heat sink and a bigger fan, and that is what made it so noisy, in particular during the summer months. Besides the CPU fan, the computer has another at the back of the PSU, and that's all fans there is, though the latter is not noisy.

The problem with the Dell website is that they say (or said) nowhere how noisy is the PC you are buying.

The good thing about this Dell PC is that it has been 100% reliable. And it is still usable as I upgraded RAM to 2 Giga, added a 500 Giga hard disk, and am using Linux most of the time, for which I built (with optimization) some of the more time-critical packages, such as the video driver and pulseaudio.

Anyway, it is because of my poor experience with the Dell PC that I am now thinking of building my own, but I have not yet made any decision with respect to casing, etc. I will probably go for NVidia graphics as the consensus in the Linux community appears to be that its Linux drivers are better than Radeon's.

One more question. As it seems that nowadays most CPUs are sold with fans, at least all that I have seen in the Komplett and Elara websites, is it easy to remove the fan that comes with the CPU and install a better one (meaning more powerful and/or less noisy)? Does anybody do that?

Deano12345

Piscium wrote: »

One more question. As it seems that nowadays most CPUs are sold with fans, at least all that I have seen in the Komplett and Elara websites, is it easy to remove the fan that comes with the CPU and install a better one (meaning more powerful and/or less noisy)? Does anybody do that?

The fan and CPU are not attached to each other when you buy the new processor.Yes you can buy a new one.For example, I went from




To

pogcica

You will also find plenty of aftermarket CPU coolers on both those sites and they will list what CPU socket they support, again look for reviews of them you think you might like

Rgds D

Piscium

Found a nice video from Intel on how to install a HSF that is quite similar to that in the picture posted by Deano12345:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6NbPMQgwPM&feature=related