Do I have to buy a CPU fan and heatsink seperate, or does it come with the CPU? Same with thermal paste?
Yes, you buy them separately. Bundles do exist but what fan or cooler you get is based on your case and what you're looking for, etc. Some coolers include thermal paste but most times you get that yourself, too.
^ The guy above me is misinformed.
All cpus come with a heatsink, fan and thermal paste pre-applied, inside the box. It's called a stock heatsink and fan. But if you buy one of the Intel extreme CPUs like 4820, 4960X they don't include anything except the cpu itself. If you are not looking to overclock, there is no use of buying an aftermarket heatsink or fan. Tell us the name of the cpu you want to buy and someone will confirm it for you.
Not so much misinformed, I just think I'm more smart than I actually am.
Sorry for the incorrect info, OP.
yup. The extreme edition and (correct me if I'm wrong) Xeons do not come with stock coolers. Simply because a stock cooler is bad/NOT GOOD ENOUGH and if you're buying those parts you probably (hopefully) know what you're doing and you know what do buy in terms of cooling for what you'll be doing with said cpu.
I did a quick check and it seems like the lower edition xeons like E3 include a stock cooler, while the E5 and E7 don't. They have boxes similar to the i7-es.
2011 (or any server grade parts that i'm aware of) don't come with heatsinks
an e3 doesn't even deserve the name xeon, i thought the xeons were always enterprise chips, since when did they start making them for the desktop socket
I am either getting an 8320 or an 8350
The FX8xxx cpu's come with a heatsink with pree aplyed paste.(anless you buy a oem ..its just a cpu in a box)...but there useless and loud under load you will be better buying a cheap heatsink like a coolermaster 212 evo or a XIGMATEK Gaia
owner of a FX6350 heatsink i can confirm that they're much warmer and they're loud under moderate load.
I never use stock heatsink ever! lol
You don't need to buy an aftermarket cooler but you probably should. You can't go wrong with a coolermaster 212.
My 8350 came with a cpu cooler and termal paste on it. You might wanna buy a new cooler though, the stock one gets the job done but its noisy as a vacuum cleaner.
simple answer: yes they come together heatsink + fan + thermalpaste
but you could buy extra fans to add in push\pull config. if possible.