Question 1

Do the refurb coolers come with all of the included components that the brand new ones do? (Like mounting hardware, screws and spare fan mounts)

Accepted Answer

Yes. Exactly as new. Only way to tell it was "refurb" was box had been obviously opened. ALL hardware was still in original packaging, all documentation present, and protective film still on base of cooler. I purchased two of these, and both were exactly the same as new, identical to the new one I purchased months ago. Awesome deal!

Question 2

how much better is this than amd's stock cooler? (not the new wraith one but the old cooler)

Accepted Answer

I'm using the Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 board and Phanteks Eclipse P400 case, with Corsair AF140 and AF120 fans that I had laying around. With all of those, and ambient room temperature of around 24 degrees Celsius. I installed the cooler with just the stock fan in front, pushing towards the rear of the case. I set my FX-8300 to run at a constant stock speed of 3.28GHz (disabled turbo boost for this test). With this setup, I maintained 36* C at idle and around 40* to 41* gaming (Diablo III for 20 minutes). This cooler comes with a second bracket for a rear CPU fan, and with that installed I noticed maybe a defree or two cooler CPU temps. This was with using the Tuniq TX-4 thermal paste as well.

My motherboard calls for a "downward blowing" CPU cooler, which is what the stock AMD (non-Wraith) cooler is. So out of curiosity (and because I saw your question pop up in my email) I took the Hyper 212 EVO out, cleaned off all the thermal grease from the CPU, and installed the stock cooler. I left the pre-applied stock thermal grease on the cooler, and let the computer idle to warm everything up to get a true idle temp reading. With this I was suprised at how much hotter the CPU got... idle temps were around 41* C. While idling my AV software just happened to start an auto-update, and I noticed the fan on the stock cooler ramp up to where it was audibly noticeable. CPU usage only went up to about 15-20% utilization for 20-30 seconds, yet the CPU temp jumped up to around 46* C. You might be able to get the temps lower with different thermal paste, but I would recommend any aftermarket cooler really. You can get one for around $20/$25 which to me is well worth it since most of them you can reuse and they're usually not specific to a certain socket.

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