Necessity for new cooling unit when moving from a Core 2 Duo to a Core 2 Quad

Question

I own a desktop with the MSI P965 NEO-F motherboard installed. As you can see from the link, this motherboard can only accept Intel Core 2 Duo - generation processors, with the LGA775 socket. It is a decade-old motherboard.

I currently have the Intel® Core™2 Duo E6600 installed (I don't have enough reputation to post many links, kindly Google it for specifications). It came with its original cooling unit, which I have not touched since. I am considering upgrading the CPU to the best possible CPU that my mobo can support, the Intel® Core™2 Quad Q9550. To that end, my question is simple: would I need to also change the cooling unit, or is it sufficient that I just purchase the processor itself? Not needing to purchase the cooling unit would reduce my costs significantly.

I should also note that I have looked up this relevant thread, yet no mentioning of the cooling unit is made. I am also pretty confident that despite the increased TDP of the quad core, I will have no issues pertaining to power supply, since I am currently able to supply about 350 Watts more than my maximum power usage.

Answer 1

Core 2 duo Intel and the smaller haswell processors came with these little scrawny heatsincs for me. The Quad 775 came with a similar style of stock Intel sink but the fins and copper core are about 2 times higher.

So if you have one of these little things like is shown here, it possibly could work, with the fan going faster than desirable. If you have the much taller intel stock heatsink, then that will work fine.

I included in the picture one of the tower type of coolers, they are not a necessary item , but work much better. With large fan(s), and much more area they can not only cool when overclocked, but also the fan noise will be greatly reduced when it easily cools stock speeds even with high loads. Like most tower type coolers the mounting is bolted to the board, requiring access to the back of the board, or board removal.