XIGMATEK Gaia SD1283 120mm Long Life Bearing CPU Cooler LGA1150 Haswell Compatible

Pros: Installed on AM3 board in an Antec 300 case. Dropped idle temp to a couple of degrees above ambient. More importantly, fan idles at 800 rpm silently. Stress testing 4 cores/89watt cpu took the fan up to about 1000 rpm, still quiet.

My needs are silence, not for overclocking. Does the trick.

Cons: Requires installing new backing plate, so MB had to be removed from case. More work to assemble than most, so follow instructions carefully.

Overall Review: Used ceramique 2 from Arctic Silver not the included paste.

Pros: This kept my FM2 A10 5800K around 15 degrees Fahrenheit cooler under maximum load which made it easier and safer to overclock it. The mounting is sturdy and uses high quality metal. It's absolutely huge, which helps with noise and cooling ability. It did fit on my MSI FM2-A85XA-GD65 motherboard, but just barely. It's more vertical than wide, making it a good choice for most boards.

Cons: The thermal paste it comes with is terrible so obviously I used Arctic Silver instead. The instructions didn't refer to FM2 sockets specifically and the FM1 instructions were split into "type 1" and "type 2" which seemed a bit hard to determine. After a while, I figured out how to mount it though.

I spun the fan blades with my finger and there was a very significant wobbling vibration around the entire fan body so obviously isn't horribly unbalanced. It still ran fairly quietly and with a lot of air flow.

Considering the amount of damage it did to my finger when I accidentally knicked the fan blade, there's no way it runs at the stated 0.13A.

Overall Review: I built this PC at my shop and had to replace the original FM2 stock cooler with this one because the fan was defective and I didn't want to RMA the entire chip. I had to rebuild the entire PC inside of a wider case because of this cooler. It's ridiculously huge. Out of the 10 cases I had, this fit in 2 of them. Make sure your case is, at the very least, 8 inches wide or this will not fit.