HardOCP did a nice little writeup on three budget CPU coolers: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2, Scythe SHURIKEN Rev.B, and the Cooler Master N520. The review focuses on temperature, overclocking and sound levels.

They ruled the best of the bunch to be the Cooler Master N520, which at the time of the article is around $39.99. With some CPU heatsinks reaching at around $60-80 bucks these days, it’s a good trade-off unless you plan to go full out water-cooling.

Here’s a snip:
We originally set out to see if those expensive $65+ coolers were the only choice to cool your power overclocked CPU. The answer to that question is a resounding “sort of.” Out of the coolers tested here today only the Cooler Master N520 is able to offer solid performance. The other coolers tested today just did not warrant purchasing over the stock Intel cooler. Of course, if you recall the COGAGE TRUE Spirit is a sub $40 cooler then things start looking a little brighter. So it seems that you don’t always have to spend a huge sum of money to get great performance, you just have to spend it wisely.

Be sure to click here to read the entire review.