Yes, you are (in this community anyway, where most people know better). Aftermarket coolers - those that are designed well that is - are much more effective at cooling a CPU, be it overclocked or running at stock speeds. There is much evidence to support this and CPC magazine reviews of any cooler (Air or liquid) compare temperatures to the Intel and AMD reference coolers.
Most people buy aftermarket coolers because they are much efficent than the stock cooler. Electronics produce heat. And CPUs produce a lot of heat. When devices such as the CPU kepp getting hot(even without overclocking, CPUs produce some heat) their efficiency reduce ane will reduce the lifespan of the CPU. But if u can kepp the temps low it will be better for the CPU. True that most people buy coolers when they want to overclock. But as u said ppl might recomend them because; *to keep their temps as low as possible because it will be good for the CPU as i explained earlier *they might be living in an area that is usually hot. So the stock cooler wont be so efficient in the cooling job. Then they tend to buy aftermarket coolers. *During summer time the stock cooler wont be so efficient for cooling. Then they tend to buy aftermarket coolers Hope this answers ur question
The more efficient a cooler is, the quieter the fans on it can run to have a similar performance to the reference Intel/AMD ones. This is an additional reason to the ones above.
The stock Intel cooler is garbage. It's designed to be just good enough. An aftermarket cooler will not only keep your CPU cooler, but it will also do it with less noise which is a big adventage for me.
Remember, the stock intel cooler is supplied with the processor for free, and like all computer hardware, is worth exactly what you paid for it. Some notes; Grossly undersized to deal with mid-range processors and more. Low build quality, including in my experience anyway a poor contact area. Horrible preapplied TIM further degrades the contact patch, which lets more heat build up in little pockets of the CPU. Useless mounting system can be easily dislodged, particularly if the cooler's been removed more than once in it's lifespan. Noisy as hell thanks to low-quality, small, cheap fan. All of the above induce heat and stress in your processor and yourself. Even if you don't overclock, the price difference between an OEM and a retail processor is often enough to buy an aftermarket that will make a considerable impression on the component's lifespan.
Then you aren't really pushing your processor, I think. The would explain the reasonable (though far from brilliant) temperatures, which are too low to be properly loaded but are probably bumped up by the heat insulation effect of your case's sound insulation. If you were pushing it, the Titan that BiT recommends tests some 28 degrees Celsius colder than the supplied 1366 cooler at load. You don't have to overclock to be running a hot processor, either, and that's looking increasingly true for more powerful processor generations like Gulftown also.
The stock cooler with my AMD athlon 2500+ was crap, same with the stock cooler for my AMD 3700+. But by the time i bought another CPU brand spanking new which was my Q6600 the stock cooler actually worked really well with little noise. Very rare! I hear the i7 stock cooler is a POS! its a case of you win some, you lose some.
Less is the temperature, longer it will live. We talk about Processor, electronique device, those thing dont really like Hot temperature. For the One who want to O/C his CPU, the Intel Stock cooler in a piece of Junk. As Exemple, my CPU at 2.8, the tempurature was at 70, not good at all !!
I buy an aftermarket CPU cooler to extend the lifespan of a CPU. Regardless if I OC or not. First computer I built, the component that failed in the end was the CPU. Granted it took a couple years, but since then I've gone with aftermarket cooling. Of course, the fault could be me, but I'd rather blame the component
