TR Forums

i'm getting ready to build a secondary family computer that will basically be used by my wife and 5 year old daughter (internet for my wife and age appropriate games for my daughter), my question is should i add a cpu cooler, do i really need it, and if so what do you recommend? i don't plan to oc and if i did it would not be an aggressive oc.
here is my build:

i3-350,gigabyte ga-h55m-usb3 using on board graphics, 4gb kingston ddr-1333, caviar black 750, samsung sh-s223l, corsair cmpsu-400cx 400w

all going into an old dell case i have laying around.

thanks for any input!

the stock cpu cooler will be fine...and you could even overclock with it. it just won't allow you to reach the higher overclock level that an aftermarket cooler would allow. usually the better the cooling, the better the overclock. but the i3-530 runs cool and is a very good overclocking chip so you might as well crank it up a little bit...you might not reach the 4ghz level that other people are reporting with your cpu, but 3.6ghz should be doable on stock cooling. obviously case ventilation will come into play also.

edit:// forgot to mention that the only thing i have noticed about stock intel coolers is that they have a tendency to clog up with dust more so than aftermarket coolers (at least the ones i have purchased). so you just have to clean them out more often...every few months grab a can of compressed air or vacuum and clean out the stock cooler....dust really builds up in between those fins.

As someone who recently had issues with an i3-530 and cooling, I can say that the stock cooler is more than enough to cool the CPU provided it's installed properly (although you should make sure not to use too much thermal paste -as I did-).