As a point of reference, I had some heat issues a few days ago and found a lot of choices on newegg. Also, found this cool Liquid Cooling System linked through a review on BluesNews.

Poll Legend:
HSF = Heat Sink Fan combo. Example: Thermaltake CL-P0200 Silent 939 K8 (Link)
HS = Heat Sink only. No fan so no noise. Example: Asus Ultra Silent for Ultimate Performance (Link)
Liquid cooling System: Example: Cool Masters AQUAGATE Mini R80/R120 System (Link)

So go ahead and vote and lets see what you all are doing.

stock HSF....system is cool and quiet

ymmv however since it seems my situation is quite unique

Zalman radial coolers are all I use. Nice slow (therefore reliable) and basically silent fan.

Stock Intel for me as well. Even with the hot summers over here I haven't had any problems with it so far.

I use a koolance exos water system using nonconductive fluid. Now, while this should be all "ooh what hotness" I will tell you that in retrospect, a few years later, I suffer from a little "what was I thinking" syndrome.

Yes, it works. Yes, it keeps things pretty quiet. However, while it let me OC my vidcard and processor, I soon found out that in order to keep my hard drives and memory cool enough not to cause issues, I needed decent airflow. Add to this the rather significant weight of vid card water systems and you end up with a remarkably fragile setup.

So yes, it works, and yes, I get some OC out of it. But in the end, I think I would have been better off saving the 500 bucks or so and putting it in a bank for upgrades later on in the cycle...

I use the stock heatsink from Intel. The Pentium D 9xx series comes with some ridiculously big heat sinks...

Socket 754. An old Alienware case with a side fan, one or two front fans, and a back fan in addition to the PSU fan. I'll have to go get MBM again and check my temps, but I recall them being "okay". Not great, not bad, just ok.

Sorry to butt in but this is really starting to irk me. Seems like there are several people around with similar setups and hugely varying results. Could the case make that much difference? I assume I dont need to ask if people are quoting temps on clean boxes (i.e. dust free)

amd64 3200 socket 939..... 35-40 stock....37-45 @ 2.5 ghz

I really want to buy one of those fancy coolers, just have to figure out a way to make the damn thing hotter

The case I had previous to the one I currently was clean, but ran hot. Really hot. A good day was in the low fifties, and in the summer while gaming a reboot was not uncommon. I eventually had to pop off the side and run a normal fan in there to keep my hardware in order.

After upgrading to a nice CoolerMaster tower, the temps dropped by almost ten degrees. I should have done it years ago.

The case makes a big difference, as do the fans you're using, and even cabling can have an impact. The big issue is airflow - you need cool(er) air coming into the case and the hot(ter) air being pushed/pulled out. If you have blockages or just a case that doesn't let enough air in(or out) or maybe you've got _all_ your fans pointing in instead of some in and some out(airflow) then you won't get as good results as someone who's made it a point to arrange things well. If you just have fans that are simply stirring up the warm air inside the case, it's gonna be hot.

Anyway, I've got a Chaintech VNF3-250 (socket 754) and a Sempron 3100+, 2 HDs in the bays, a Radeon 9800Pro, a fan on the side/door of the case blowing in, a fan (or is it 2?) on the front blowing in, and a fan on the back blowing out(along with the PSU fan blowing out). There doesn't seem to be much difference with teh door closed or open, but if you're having heat issues, try taking the door/sides off and see if your temps improve. If so, maybe you've got airflow issues.

guess I just didnt think case type would make that much difference. my case is the one pictured in your thread there

My CPU (Barton 2600+ overclocked to 2,2 GHz) cooler is Thermaltake, full copper, nothing fancy. No problems, so far (18 months).

CNPS7000B-Cu LED:

It's gigantic, and very heavy but you can't hear it with your ear next to it.

This + Cool & Quiet = You'll never hear it; I'm not even kidding. Sometimes it drops to like 800 RPMs and scares my monitoring software. If you get one for an AMD CPU with Cool'n'Quiet take the speed adjustment thing that comes with it and throw it away. You don't need it.

I was so impressed with quiet/effectiveness I got a zalman graphics card cooler and passive chipset heatsink (after going through two stock ASUS fans.

Well, I'm still reading some of these water cooling solutions and found a review of the G-Cooler LC478K8 Water Cooling Kit on Reviewdesk.com. As it turns out, the pump failed after just one (1) day (see page 4 of the review. link). That's pretty hedious. I'd steer clear of this one.

CEJ: I've been very happy with my Koolance Exos stuff. I don't OC, I just like it quiet. Temps stay quite low. I've never really been able to succesfully OC, but its not because of the temps, I'm quite sure of that. I just always end up buying out at the edge of performance when I upgrade, and there's usually not much OC room.

But the exos is great, flexible, and a good bargain.