I built my system about 18 months ago, and foolishly bought many of the cheapest components available, and since then have had to endure my mistakes! One of the major disadvantages of the case I bought is that the PSU sat directly over the CPU fan, thus preventing clean air flow. I bought a Coolermaster HCC002 thinking this would improve matters, but it merely made my system extremely noisy!

This weekend I took the first step towards quietness, and invested in a lovely shiny new case which, apart from looking damn good, will allow me the space to insert some silent cooling heatsinks. At the moment I'm leaning toward the Zalman flower (6000CU), with an eventual aim of installing some large, quiet fans in the case, and maybe some kind of blow-hole with a funnel set-up leading to the flower, to ensure cool airflow over the top.

The problem I have is that the CPU socket is right on the edge of the motherboard, allowing only approx 25mm clearance between the edge of the CPU and the power supply! The flower cooler looks quite long from fin-to-fin. I was wondering if anyone could provide me with a 'top-down' measurement of the heatsink, measuring from where the edge of the CPU is, to the outermost edge of the last fin?

Otherwise, an alternative heatsink suggestion would be useful! :/

Not sure about the Zalman size (tho i think you're gonna be out of luck unfortunately...), but if thats a no-go then Alpha heatsinks are great value. You running AMD? if so i think the 8045 is the one to look for - if Intel then look for 8942.


Then look for either a panaflo L1a or a papst 19dB (i think its the NGML?) 80mm which should work ok undervolted to about 7V, but check you're temps with MBM.

The length of the Zalman flower is 11 cm or 4.3".