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AMD Aircooling Round-Up of 2003
JMke writes: "If you want a silent AMD system you almost always have to get yourself a higher-class heatsink. Thermalright and other manufactures have brought out updated products that can keep your CPU cool while keeping the noise down, hardware geek site Madshrimps has published a roundup of the best heatsinks from 2003 that money can buy in 2004, read it here."
The CPU fan is both more important and, generally, quieter than the power supply. It seems quite an unreasonable risk to jeopardize your CPU for a few extra decibels when there are easier, safer ways to quiet down a system.
Usually something as simple as moving the case can make a significant difference.
Zalman 7000-Cu!!!
Best Heatsink I've ever owned. Solid, and frosty.
Aircooling. What is it all about... is it good, or is it whack?
try Vapochill.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
they sure will be mad, the site is already down..
So I guess we are testing the heatsinks right now, as we pound the shineola out of their webservers?
Friends don't let friends post.
Compaq FAQ: Where do I find the "Any" key on my keyboard? (FAQ2859)
The term "any key" does not refer to a particular key on the keyboard. It simply means to strike any one of the keys on your keyboard or handheld screen.
I hope their server has a good heatsink as the curse of /. seems to have struck it already
/tongue-in-cheek
After hearing of many AMD processors popping louder than a lobster in a vat of boiling water, I considered a little liquid cooling to keep my rig from becoming an expensive piece of sand...
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
This reminds me of the time a couple months ago that I upgraded my heatsink, and for whatever reason absentmindedly left my old copper block on my toaster oven. Weeks later I noticed the toaster was not working quite as well as it used to, and I realized the heatsink was to blame!
Then I realized that the toaster was just fucked up and that I was just an idiot.
If I could make this sig kill you, I would.
I've been stuck with a really noisy AMD system as my desktop for the last 6 months or so... It's sufficiently bad that I have to shut 2 doors between the workroom and the bedroom (not the room doors, ones in-between) so it can't be heard at night...
....
I kept telling myself to get a new chip/fan/mboard, but I've been waiting for the 64-bit ones to come out (not because they're 64-bit, but because they're simply faster and better designed). Now at last, I can reduce the noise-level, at least once I've sent in and paid my tax return
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
One thing I found to help keep it quite is to actually clean the dust off the fan blades.
If you are looking for a quiet system you must buy a quality heatsink and underclock or go with a VIA
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
I wish their site wasn't slashdotted already, I really have need of a better solution. (Yes, I know, I should shut up and subscribe already.)
John
It runs almost completely silent and keeps things impressively cool. Didn't have to buy special thermal grease, either. It's also compatible with Pentium 4's and the Athlon 64. It really is teh uber, and comes with a free fanmate to manually adjust fan speed. However, it is huge and doesn't fit on all motherboards, so buyer beware.
I'm using the AMD supplied fan/HS on my XP2600/333 and it's louder then the PS fan, or any other fans for that matter. There was something useful on a review site some time back, where they reviewed the individual fans. Once you found a sink you liked you could usually go quieter with an Oryx or somesuch fan. That info would be welcome. Which fans are quietest, without sacrificing CFM/RPM.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
:edit: Site appears to be slowing/not responding :/edit:
:
Conclusion
Let's look at the advantages and disadvantages of the reviewed products
Swiftech MCX462-V
(Provided by: Bacata)
PRO
Plug&Play installation
Easy attachment of both 80&90mm fans
Top end performance in both silent as loud categories
CON
Higher price
The MCX462-V is a true engineering beauty, combining functionality with top performance, the helicoid pin layout allows for very low noise production when using different types of fans. The full copper block provides excellent thermal conduction making overclocking possible even with very silent fans!
Thermalright SP-97
(Provided by: Thermalright)
PRO
1st class performance in all categories
Secure installation
Efficiency increases with the CPU overclock thanks to the heat pipes
CON
Installation requires motherboard removal
The successful formula from the SP-94 Intel heatsink has been brought over to the AMD side of town, and the performance is stunting, providing excellent results no matter what fan is used, it edges out the competition by a comfortable margin!
Thermalright SLK947-U
(Provided by: Bacata)
PRO
Good overall performance
Secure installation
Competitively priced
CON
Installation requires motherboard removal
The "older" SLK947-U still delivers very respectable results, although its performance has been surpassed by the SP-97, it manages to provide the best performance/price ratio in this roundup. If you are on a budget but still want top end air-cooling for your AMD setup then look no further then the latest SLK from Thermalright!
Scythe Kamakaze
(Provided by: Bacata)
PRO
Includes a Fan + Rheobus
Decent performance
CON
Installation method far from perfect on all motherboards
I had a lot of installation issues with this heatsink but that was due to the socket/capacitor layout used by the board on which we did the test. The performance is average, edging out the old PAL8045 by a very small margin.
Evercool MAG-01 & CUF-715CA
(Provided by: Evercool)
PRO
Very easy installation
Decent performance
Silent 70mm fan included
Very competitively priced
CON
Not "strong" enough for overclocking your AMD
Both Evercool heatsink proved to be worthy replacements for the Stock AMD cooler, providing better cooling at lower noise levels while being priced at only ~20! My preference goes out to the MAG-01 as it can be installed on almost all popular Sockets out there from Intel & AMD. The copper/alu mix does have an impact on the performance when compared to the full copper CUF-715CA, but the difference is minimal.
Dan's Data has amazing heat sink reviews. Dan tests each heat sink with a heater simulating the Pentium or Athlon CPU. He publishes the R-theta values for each sink tested and has a very straightforward scientific view of the whole process.
Since even Porsche abandoned it in the mid-90s, I guess it's whack.
Every time i apply thermal grease to a new heatsink, it absorbs fairly rapidly into my skin. Am i the only idiot who doesn't use gloves or an implement to put the stuff on? Maybe I should just go play with beads of mercury and eat my yoghurt with a lead spoon, chemical poisoning be damned!
1. Post early
2. Make sure at least one word is on topic
3. ???
4. Profit!
Anyway, in response to the AC - the article was supposedly about heatsinks, not CPU fans. Although some heatsinks come with a fan permanently attached, the better ones let you pick your own fan.
OTOH, this is said without having RTFA so YMMV and IANAL.
What's a good heatsink that fits on a dual athlon board?
Why doesn't slashdot mirror/cache the articles they report about for the first 8 hours?
I vote the Coolermaster Aero 7 as my top cooler pick of 2003. It's cheap (under $20), and keeps my XP2000+ 10-15 celcius cooler than the stock heatsink did. I've also read of many people overclocking 2500+ Bartons to 3200+ levels, and the Aero 7 keeps it cool. The best part is you can adjust the cooling at any time, with the dial you can put in any 3.5" bay. I keep mine really low, but if I needed mega cooling, just turn it up (although on max cooling it's loud!) It uses a really weird fan, and I think that might be the secret of its success. Instead of the usual 'sucks from above, blows downwards' type thing, it spins on the same plane as the motherboard, meaning it sucks in air from both sides, and blows it all down. So you get far more air throughput. This means you can turn the RPMs down, and I can cool my overclocked XP2000+ with the fan running at 1600RPM! My old AMD stock cooler was almost 3000RPM, and far noisier. If anyone wants to get one, get the cheaper aluminium one. It actually cools better than the copper one! Why? Because it's a lot bigger than the copper one.. so make sure you have the room ;-) Anyway, a bargain. I hope they come out with one for the 64's.
Then just turn down the fans in your PSU, and you have near silent cooling up to a decent speed :-)
The CPU fan is both more important and, generally, quieter than the power supply.
Not in my experience, usually the CPU fans are 60mm and higher RPM, whereas the power supply is generally larger with a slower RPM. To the first order RPM == noise...
These days there isn't much jeopardy to run a couple degrees hotter for several dB quieter operation. I know that Intel CPUs will throttle down if they get dangerously hot. Frankly I'd rather save my hearing and sanity than the CPU anyway.
One additional annoyance is that most motherboard manufacturers go to the added length of putting unnecessary fans on the board chipset as well. These tend to be small (40mm) and run at stupidly high speeds (6000+ RPM) given the amount of power dissipation they need to counter.
One system I have, a shuttle XPC, doubles up the task of case fan and CPU cooler. I pulled the fan off the board chipset, and also the graphics card (replaced the graphics one with a Zalman passive), pulled the 80mm 5000 RPM Sunon dustbuster fan off the CPU heatsink and replaced it with a 2500 RPM much quieter fan. Now it runs with a total of two fans, CPU and PS, much quieter even at full load. How is this possible without having the thing cook itself ?? simple by underclocking - running the FSB at 190MHz instead of 200MHz. Performance difference is incremental and it runs stable at full load (and its much much quieter).
I will have to disagree here. I have spend a good amount of effort trying to quite down the tree systems I have in my small 'office' at home.
By far the loudest thing in the cases are the CPU fans and I don't even have 'quite' power supplies. I've started the ran the system for 10 seconds or so with the CPU fan unplugged. I have bought 3 or 4 Athlon CPU fans which were supposed to be quiet but I haven't been happy with any of them.
My wife but a new Shuttle XPC and those are damn silent. My next system will be the Athlon64 Shuttle XPC.
Well my work desktop runs at around 60 decibels from ~2 feet away. Yes, that's loud. And it's an Intel P3 system from IBM. I want a new desktop PC purely because it's so damn loud... I don't actually need more CPU, memory, or disk.
My home PCs are all AMD, all with the stock fan/hs. The stock AMD fan/hs isn't incredibly noisy, but it certainly isn't the quietest thing out there. The loudest system is really quite bad -- but it's because of a very loud PS fan and several case fans. I'll eventually take some steps to quiet it down, because it is ungodly loud (at least to me).
If you really want to reduce system noise, then check out Silent PC Review. They do some real testing of sound levels and give some pretty solid advice on how to quiet PCs.
They should have purchased a bigger heatsink for their websurfer.....slashdotted already!
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
Indeed. I've found that my PC runs quiet and stable when I clean it every month or two. I just take the tower out the back door, open the case and use either a hair dryer or reversible vacuum to blow out the excess dust. (nothing too powerful, just a large stream of directed air.) Takes every bit of five minutes of downtime, then it's back up and running, usually a degree or 2 cooler than before. I think the key is don't let it get to the point where you have to physically scrape the crud off the fan blades with a Qtip or something. Preventative maintenance is best.
Is a custom solution. No company would dare make such an air cooling system.
What you need:
1) Bore a large hole on the plate behind the where the CPU is behind the motherboard, and drill a hole in the left side of the case and mount a SUNON 120mm fan on it, blowing out.
2) Get an ALPHA heatsink with a 80mm fan mount, it'll cost you about $50. It requires that you have those 4 holes around the CPU to mount it, since it's so huge.
3) Get an 80mm-120mm fan adapter and mount a 120mm SUNON fan on the alpha heatsink, blowing outwards. You should also have another 120mm SUNON fan on the outside of the case in front of the CPU, blowing outwards.
I've seen a Barton 2500+ overclocked to 4000 with it, on air alone. At 2500, it ran at 15*C idle, and at 4000, it runs at about 35-40*C. It's a lot cheaper and easier than watercooling.
Can anyone explain why thermoelectic coolers (Peltier coolers) are not the standard accessory to any cooling kit?
My guess is current draw.
If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
For the parent and the parent's parent i have one word for you .... Enermax.
I find their fans to be of superior quality. So much so that I use the Enermax Fans too cool my case and of course an Enermax Power supply. Since I upgraded my noise level has dropped significantly.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
I also remove the sheetmetal plates that block off unused slots, and try to use only every other slot.. That lets air blow out in between the expansion cards, preventing a dead air zone.
I use only one 7 inch or 4 inch AC case fan (in a hole cut right thru the face of the case, with a guard on it made out of hardware cloth) at low speed to blow air into the case (I reduce the speed with a small AC capacitor (like used for AC motor running) in series with the AC fan). I blow the air into the case, not draw it out, because I don't want to fight against the powersupply fan.
If you have a lot of fans, the tone from each fan can work together to create what is called a beat frequency, like the complex tones you get if you pluck two or more guitar strings at the same time.
mmmm, hairdryer, static, nice.
karma karma karma karma karma chameleon, you come and go, you come and go.
Is the Vantec Aeroflow with TMD fans (that are very quiet).
You know that forest people keep talking about where there's nobody around to hear things? I put my computer cases there, and now they don't make any sound at all.
(Unfortunately, one my systems did get destroyed when a tree fell on it.)
I like this site because it reviews all kinds of PC silencing stuff, not just heatsinks/fans. Seems to be modeled on the popular www.storagereview.com site.
Has reviews of...
DIY Systems
Prebuilt Systems
Cases & Damping
Power Supplies
Cooling
Fans & Controls
Storage
No, Porsche and Volkswagen are whack for no longer being Porsche and Volkswagen.
WTF? The engine in the FRONT of the car? THAT is whack!
I honestly don't understand why people bother with air cooling nowadays, watercooling has matured to an incredible extent... and there are plenty of all-in-one do it yourself kits on the market. The fact that water cooling has been around for a long time now will almost guarentee that your kit will work properly and without problems right out of the box.
Some of these ultra-fancy-schmancy air cooling kits that I'm seeing out there are really not worth the money spent on such garbage. Most of it actually ends up being aesthetics over performance, but who cares as long as it looks neat and it's supposed to be super quiet, right?
As a test, I bought one of the _cheapest_ water cooling kits I could find. CPU cooling only, it only ended up costing about $30 more than a high end, high performing air-cooling heatsink and mega fan. The kit I got was the Thermaltake Aquarius II, I think even ThinkGeek sells this sucker. You want quiet? This sucker is quiet.
It's small, easy as hell to install and does the job with only 29db ambient noise. Not bad at all. This kit also ended up outperforming a lot of my best air cooling heatsinks without even really trying. Average CPU temp with air cooling was around 120 degrees, with the water kit, I sit around 103-105 degrees, max. Big difference. Even though this was one of the cheapest and laziest kits I could find, it ended up being a much better way for me to cool my system than any of those air suckers. Several additional reasons why...
1) Water kits generally don't recirculate hot air within the case/system. You wanna exhaust the hot air out of the case? Guess what, that means MORE FANS.
2) Water is a far more efficient way to transfer heat.
3) The waterblocks usually aren't nearly as heavy as the air-based heatsink coolers. Less weight on the CPU, less chance of the damn thing snapping off in transit. (Though ANY smart person would do the right thing and take it off, box the CPU separately, if they were ever to transport their case via shipping or long distances.)
4) Did I mention how quiet these damn things are? Just because you can put water in your system doesn't mean EVERYTHING requires a water block. For those dealing with serious heat issues, often the CPU fan IS the noisiest fan in the system.
I ended up putting in an Antec SmartBlue dual fan PSU in my case... which was noticably quieter than a crappy single-fan PSU. Between this and the water kit for the CPU, I was able to remove another 4 fans from my full tower because I no longer needed the intricate intake and exhaust system I had set up to circulate the hot air with my previous air-cooling setup.
You want quiet? Go water.
If you are concerned about noise, and still want a good heatsink, get a Zalman.
I have the new copper flower, which has ~400 fins on it. And a 92mm fan sitting in between them...at max rpm's it is 25dbs. And it keeps my 2500+ oc'ed to 3000+ under control easily.
It weighs about 2 lbs, and instead of hooking into the socket, it has mounts that screw directly into the motherboard.
Another plus side, it comes with a free controller that can take the fan down to 21bs.
That paired with 4 vantec stealth fans, and a zalman 400 watt PSU, and a DigiDoc 5+ fan controller, the only thing I can hear running most of the time is the CPU Fan, and that barely, and then the subdued whine of my 9800 Pro AIW fan...which I don't want to replace for warranty reasons yet...
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setting up fans and "heatsinks" and "stuff" is just so annoying, and requires me to move around when i would rather not.
burning things is pretty easy though. With the right equipment, i could conceivably accomplish this from my chair without missing any of the hott, XXX dragonball z action on Toonami.
i think a better solution would be to just make everything AROUND my PC much, much (XXX action) hotter, so that is would SEEM cooler by comparison.
See? The relativity thingy, that's what we're talking about, just like einswhatever said.
If AMD is reading this, STAY AWAY FROM MY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY YOU MONGRELS! PRIOR ART!
** Chigusaaa!!! You're the coolest girl in the WORLD!!! **
I agree with you, the power supply is quiet. I run some old pentiums as routers and such with just large heat sinks on the CPU. The power supply has the only fan in the box, and without the hard disk, I wouldn't be able to tell these things were running.
The smaller, higher RPM fans are the noisy ones, the larger 80mm (Power Supply) fans can move the same ammount of air at a lower rpm, and are quieter. The thing is, they won't fit on a normal CPU heatsink, so you must duct them (Dell does this on a lot of the machines I have seen).
Cthulhu Saves.
buying a better CPU fan/heat-sink is not jeopardizing it. and if you think a 60 mm fan is quet, then you are nuts.
I use heat-sinks that attach to the motherboard anyway since one time I fried a proc by the heat-sink falling off over the weekend because the lugs were broken.
I spin my fan down to 2300 RPMs and the CPU temp never goes above 46 C.
I then add a barracuda drive as you get no sound from its spinning (that whine can give you a heat ache) and my PS is the only thing left that is loud, though right now it is quiet enough that in a quiet house you have to be right next to it to hear it.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Amen! And they're always the first fans to die. The northbridge fan on my motherboard started to die a couple months ago so I took it off, planning to pick up a replacement at an upcoming computer show. I noticed a funny thing after removing the fan. The northbridge heatsink doesn't even get warm!!!
WTF?!?
...then go for Nexus's range of PSUs, heatsinks and fans.
Without a doubt they are amongst the best I've come across, and I'm including the likes of Zalman, Q-Technology, etc when I say that. You can see there range of products on their website. Definitely worth checking out.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Looks like someone hasn't been overclocking enough!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Never had any problems in the 5 years I've been doing it. Off course, the PC is off and unplugged. Keep the dryer about 8-10 inches away from any components. What's the problem? I'm aware of the possible effects of ESD, but you can't just keep your equipment locked in a hermetically-sealed Farraday cage, now can you? It seems especially silly when I consider the fact that no single component in my PC case cost over $80...
Well, three really.
I wanted a very quiet PC. I bought a huge, solid, steel case, customized with a 120mm fan on the back (theory: big and slow == quiet). I got a Zalman "flower" heatsink/fan (HSF), and mounted the big Zalman fan to blow over it. I got an Enermax power supply with a speed adjustment. It's pretty quiet; I hear a fan, but I think that's the GeForce 4 card's fan.
I wanted to make a quiet PC for my wife. I bought a Lian Li aluminum case, an Arctic Cooling HSF, and a similar Enermax power supply. No fancy 120mm fan on the back, just a standard 80mm fan, but I used a very quiet one with thermostatic control so it is very slow and quiet when the system is cool. This computer, as it turns out, is almost completely silent! Much quieter than my computer. I did use a GeForce4 MX board in her system, because it has just a passive heat sink (no cooling fan), so perhaps that explains it.
I loved working with the Lian Li case. It's a PC-60 model with USB. I also much preferred the Arctic Cooling HSF. I got my Arctic Cooling HSF form SVC.com:
http://svc.com/arcoolsupsil.html
P.S. About the quiet power supply: I got a 365 Watt power supply with two cooling fans, one with a speed control and one with a thermal control (automatically runs faster when hot). This power supply has "Active PFC", which I don't completely understand, but I gather it is a more efficient way to convert AC to DC and thus makes less waste heat. It has a 3-pin jumper to attach to the motherboard, so the motherboard can monitor the speed of the power supply's main fan, and also so that the motherboard can signal to the power supply that it wants all fans powered down for sleep mode. (I don't think either computer is ever really sleeping at the moment. I ought to play around with ACPI and get that working, but they are quiet enough that it hasn't been a priority.) I ordered the power supplies from Directron. This one isn't the exact same model but it has the same features:
http://www.directron.com/eg465axve.html
P.S. Why is it really a tale of three Athlon XPs? Because I crunched one trying to put on the HSF. With an Athlon XP, be very, very careful when putting on the HSF. You can make a very expensive mistake! I'm looking forward to Athlon64 and Opteron with a heat spreader protecting the chip.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
thats not very funny
90W versus 75W. Also, the Prescotts will break the 100W barrier. AMD is cooler. (Unless you use a Pentium M @ 20-30W, and performance per MHz is better than an AXP or A64, but you'll have to wait for Intel to respond to my petition (and for me to actually get it sent out), or PowerLeap to release their Socket 479 to 478 adaptor)
I replaced my PS, blindly assuming that it was the source of the extremely loud fan noise on a 1.4Ghz Athlon system. There was almost no change, so I tried the machine with the case off, and determined that the CPU fan was loud. I replaced it with a Thermaltake, and immediately noticed a huge drop in noise.
You should have upgraded your toaster with an AMD. Not only could you remotely schedule toasting jobs with WiFi, but it toast faster too!
Seriously though, there are a lot of cool case-mod projects, and a lot of cool heatsinks, but nothing that makes use of heat dissipation. Isn't there some way to conduct all that excess heat into a useful application. Maybe an EZ-bake attachment for a drive bay. A lava lamp? You could always still have a small temperature-activated fan for when not enough heat is being dissipated by the 3rd-party device.
Usually something as simple as moving the case can make a significant difference.
It can make a difference in cooling as well.
Last month, while I was visiting a cousin upstate for the holidays, I asked if I could use his computer to check work email. While I was using it, he told me that he had to send it back to Dell twice in 3 months (he had only had it since July) due to a total failure to do anything upon powerup. He then started to go into a rant about how Dell sucks (he does that about every company that fails to meet his ridiculous level of expectations - while I was there, he refused the five large pizzas we ordered one night because the driver forgot the pizza sauce for the breadsticks.)
Anyway, I replied that I had no clue what he was talking about as I had 2 Dells myself and the entire environment at work was Dell and I had never heard of such accusations of bad service and poor quality. He stated that Dell "lied" that the computer was overheating and suggested he may have it in a bad location. I looked at where it was sitting - didn't seem so bad to me, under the desk by a window. Then the furnace kicked on. In between the wall and the computer was a vent for the furnace. He had it there to keep his feet toasty while he was using the computer. I knew my cousin was dumb, but I didn't know he was that stupid.
I felt like taking the computer into protective custody. I don't care if it's an emachines, at least give it a chance to work right before you abuse it.
I put this in two weeks ago. Thermaltake Silent Boost For under $30 (including shipping) it cools an Athlon XP at about 21 decibals. Very nice. Not 100% silent, but very very quiet for the price.
http://www.voodoopc.com/systems/f50.aspx
I also remove the sheetmetal plates that block off unused slots..
While removing the expansion plates may allow more airflow, it can also (potentially) let vermin into your computer case. A former coworker's home computer stopped working, when he opened it he found a family of mice had nested in there and chewed the cables. :)
-no text
The instructions that came with my lava lamp, at least, say not to leave it on for longer than a certain number of hours at a time (10?). It gets weird if you fall asleep and do that (many small globules floating around).
I've been thinking about the other major source of involuntary heat in my house (aside from the computers, I mean): desert reptiles and tropical fish. I wonder if a large body of water kept above 70 degrees which tends to cool down could help out a small piece of silicon which tends to heat up? Puts a new spin on the Mac fishtank.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
It's nice to see there are different components for cooling, but for those who don't want to tinker with their system, where would one go to find a manufacturer that specializes in making silent PCs?
DJCC
A couple cats solve this potential problem quite nicely, and are fairly quiet.
I was sick of hearing my Athlon 2600 box pour white noise into my apartment, so I picked up two Vantec fan controllers- one for the CPU fan, one for the case fans. The CPU controller has a built-in thermometer and audible alarm so that I cant fry my processor... the net result is a huge drop in fan noise, but I can still crank em back up during heavy-use periods- one of the best, cheapest upgrades I've done in a while!
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
Thanks for posting that...I'm afraid he was /.'d way before I got to the site.
I'm going to agree that the Thermalright SP-97 is the best air cooled heatsink out right now...for overclocking or silent pc operation. If you want to go extreme overclocking, toss some ridiculously loud/high CFM fan on there...for silent PC run a slower RPM, quieter fan. Either way this heatsink will do its job.
I just upgraded from an XP 2800+ that I bought last December to an XP 2500+ Barton...I took the Barton and changed the FSB from 333mhz to 400mhz...resulting in a 3200+ Barton (very common thing right now). With the retail heatsink/fan combo the diode (core CPU) temperature would max at around 60 c. It was rock solid (24 hours of distributed.net running in the background with BF1942 w/ 63 AI players and myself with 1600x1200 resolution to generate as much video card heat as possible...even with my guy just sitting at the spawn), but the 60 c temperature made me nervous.
I ordered one of the new Thermalright SP-97 and tossed it on there with the Tornado 92mm high RPM fans...the max temperature (even in a warm room) dropped to 44 c. Unfortunately the sound of that fan was just too much for me. I pulled it off and put my old 80mm fan (still a really good fan...65 CFM or so as opposed to the 119 CFM of the Tornado) on instead. It still maxes out to 44 c. I've been meaning to push the FSB higher, to see exactly how far I can go, but haven't gotten around to it yet.
The Thermalright SP-97 is the best heatsink I've ever used (keep in mind that you have the have a P4 CPU mount style motherboard as it doesn't have the CPU socket clips...and if it did you probably wouldn't want to use them, as this is a pretty hefty unit).
You must have got lucky...my two cats tend to make more noise than our server room.
Still...I like the idea...might have to give it a try, seeing how I can never find extra slot-covers anyway!
Unless you use a Pentium M @ 20-30W, and performance per MHz is better than an AXP or A64
Uh. So they're giving up the megahertz race and going back to sane design? (ITYM s/MHz/watt/)
First off, I'm not an overclocker.
I've built 4 systems in the last two years, all configured with the factory heatsink with the fan removed, Antec TruePower power supplies (300 to 500 watts) with the Antec fans, and a single Vantec Stealth 80mm fan exhausting out the back of the case. Round cables throughout. Good quality cases, somewhat oversized.
All these systems' CPUs would overheat with the fanless heatsinks, until I did one simple thing to each of them:
Suspend a 120mm Vantec Stealth about two inches over the factory aluminum heatsink, offcenter, blowing right down into the heatsink blades. The 80mm case exhaust fan sits right next to the CPU in each case. No extra holes in the case.
A Pentium III 933Mhz system running Devil Linux (my firewall) previously ran at 110F to 120F, now runs at 77F. Just now, I stopped the 120mm fan, and CPU temperature climbs 2F every five seconds, until it stabilizes at 113F. Restarting the fan produces a similarly fast drop in temperature.
My Pentium 4 systems, including one that has a substantial in-the-cabinet raid array, all run between 85F and 98F CPU temp. I don't even want to think about what they'd do without that 120mm fan blowing on them.
Low speed, large volume is *quiet* and *cool*.
Excepting the large raid array laden system, not one of these machines can be heard from 5 feet away.
People are overthinking cooling.
Peace. Quiet. Cheap. Cool.
Aaaaahhhhhhhh!
They could cache the site, but initally point the links to the real site. When the site realizes they're flooded and sees all the slashdot.org referrals, they can phone in to slashdot and say "hey, could you turn on your cached version?" This way, the caching is only done when requested by the site and there are no permission problems.
In any event, it benefits nobody for there to be articles posted that can't be read. Not slashdot, not the readers, not the site, not the site's advertisers. I do wish they'd pick SOME sort of solution for this.
There's half a dozen options available with just a minute's thought about it:
1. Cache like google. Remove when asked.
2. Cache, but don't use cache unless asked by site.
3. Wait to post article until permission to cache is granted by tiny web site.
4. Post article without tiny website links pending permission to cache, add links after permission.
5. Post article with links to tiny website immediately, but continue attempting to obtain permission to cache and use cache after permission obtained.
6. Cache in advance, but do not use. Only post cache link *if* original site fails. Remove cache if asked.
Etc....
Oh well... we can dream, right?
Take a look at the Antec Sonata case (part of their LifeStyle series). Comes with a quiet power supply and a quiet case fan (and you get a 2nd Panaflow 120mm for the hard drive area). Those cases are only around $100-$120.
The bigger the fan, the less RPM it needs to push a given volume of air... this usually means less noise.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Of course if you really want a quiet PC the solution is to use a Transmeta CPU instead of an x86 (or x86-compatible). The question then becomes, when will reasonably-priced Transmeta motherboards become available?
The way I look at it, the engine of the Beetle remains over the drive wheels. It used to be all in the back, now it's all in the front. Anybody who's ever driven on a winter road knows why front-wheel drive is a superior solution.
PS's aren't as loud as they used to be. There are quite a few modern Power Supplies with variable speed fans controlled by temperature sensors to regulate the speed. Antec has a wide selection. There are also case fans with temperature sensors to dynamically adjust RPMs. Those are nice for the low-end kiddy systems that aren't o/c'ed. For my power rig, I have a knob rack in a 5.25" drive bay to tweak all my fans (except the PS).
Your comment about the moving the case is valid, but your options are often limited because you need access to CD/DVD drives, USB ports, etc.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
The fan on the Northbridge that you state as unnecessary is, in fact, quite necessary with the high front side bus speeds we see in chipsets for the P4 and Athlons. These chips get quite hot and require a significant amount of airflow to cool them under any serious processor load that involves memory access. Not cooling this chip will cause system instability.
Not in my experience, usually the CPU fans are 60mm and higher RPM, whereas the power supply is generally larger with a slower RPM. To the first order RPM == noise...
Eh, noise is really related to the amount of air being moved (CFM) and the path the air takes. Air through the PS is very turbulent, while air off the CPU (& other flat surfaces) is fairly smooth. Turbulence == noise.
One additional annoyance is that most motherboard manufacturers go to the added length of putting unnecessary fans on the board chipset as well. These tend to be small (40mm) and run at stupidly high speeds (6000+ RPM) given the amount of power dissipation they need to counter.
Like the little 40mm fan that was cooling the northbridge on my KT7A-RAID, until it stopped working (dust). Now the board only sees one HD.
...Time is the best teacher, unfortunately it kills all of its students.
I've invariably found the opposite. When I was quieting my current system, for example, I found that the CPU fan was the loudest (and boy was it loud) followed by the hard drive (which was also quite loud) and finally by a suprisingly quiet PSU fan.
I took apart an eMac once (violate the warranty and risk electrocution on day one of ownership, woo-hoo!), and discovered that Apple used this sort of trick to reduce a lot of the noise their systems could make. Since the guts of the eMac are nested right under the CRT on your desk, they were pretty hard-core about keeping the machine quiet. The only fan is a huge (looks like 5 or 6 inch diameter) case fan at the back, with airflow all guided though the heatsinks to get there, and little bits of padding and "weather stipping"-like material is wedged between any two parts that could cause a noise problem. It's quite a sight to behold.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I tried a zaltech thing with a huge flower-like heatsink but it wasnt enough by itsself and needed a fan.
I use an Antec TruePower 430; it has fan outputs that slow down/speed up based on temperature. My box is nice and cool, and quite quiet when I slow my CPU fan down.
I'm looking at getting a nice Thermalright heatsink, thought. A slow 92mm fan would do much better for cooling and noise than my 60mm fan with shit heatsink that I have now. (I wrote a small script to throttle the CPU fan based on temperature. lm_sensors includes a similar script)
My other car is first.
If you use linux, you can find out just how loud your hard drives are by typing "hdparm -y /dev/hda /dev/hdb (etc)" replacing hda/hdb with the appropriate device names of your hard drives. The -y will put them into standby mode, making them spin down. For me, this makes the difference between lots of noise and hardly any noise.
The moral of this story is: don't get sucked into the hype of silent cpu fans like I did... when there are possibly much louder components to work on.
with my sk-7 and a smartcase fan 2 runing at full speed. infact my cpu's idle temp is the same as the average summers day here.
Static shouldn't be an issue unless you start combing your cat inside the case.
You keep cats in your computer case?
how often do you have to change the kitty litter?
Fix Your Own TV - RiddledTV.com Avoid the Landfill
my two cats tend to make more noise than our server room.
You're supposed to get two cats that are both girls or boys. Getting one of each ensures that you'll never get any sleep.
Learn something new.
I agree about the chipset fan. I took the chipset fan off a KG7 and the chipset HS is still cool enough to touch. It has been rock solid for two years. Note that having the fan unplugged (or dead) is not the same as removing it because the inert fan insulates the heatsink. If your case airflow is well set up, the ambient airflow over the chipset will be almost as much as that dinky little 40mm fan can produce.
removing the plates is not always a good idea, the point of having them blocked is actually to increase air flow past the items needed. If you remove those plates then the air will rush out past your cards as apposed to passing your processor. anywhere their is a whole in your case their should be a fan pushing or pulling. This is more important than just letting lots of area for air to enter or leave your case. For instance, blow air through a straw and that air moves very quicly through the straw, now cut slits in the straw and feel it. Air won't move as quickly, in fact the extra opening will create eddies, and blow back. I hope I am displaying this idea clearly. Put those plates back in cause your just making your computer ugly, not increasing air movement.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
And anyone who's ever driven on a dry road will hate himself for buying that ugly front wheel drive car just because of the few times the roads get really dangerous in winter.
Here is how I quieted down an athlonXP 1700 system to the point that I got driven nuts instead by the motor noise of my hard drives:
Power supply: antec TRUEpower 380w. This unit puts out plenty of nice clean power, and also has a dedicated 3.3v rail as opposed to being a fork from teh 5v rail. This just means it's a more robust unit. Also runs incredibly quiet.
CPU Fan: Zalman flower (I think 3500). This clip on unit has a bracket fan and a speed knob. I echewed the speed knob and replaced teh 92mm fan on the bracket with a 120mm enermax variable RPM fan, reason for this is further down.
VGA cooling: Zalman heatpipe cooler (something 80) This unit has NO fans, and uses a massive surface area to dissipate heat. It uses heatpipes to achieve efficient heat transfer to both heatsink elements on this cooler. This cooler works so well that the mere circulation effect from my 120mm fan was enough to keep a GeForce4 TI4400 running smoothly.
Motherboard cooling: I yanked the fan off my motherboard, that 120mm fan was more than enough to keep it cool due to it's proximity to the CPU socket, and how large that fan is.
The system overall was so quiet I turned it off on accident a few times becuase I wanted to turn it on, and couldn't hear it. The hard drive noise is only noticable at very short distances, but hard drive access will be very audible due to teh low noise floor, and I found it to be slightly bothersome.
Ultimately I moved to watercooling, to get quiet with more powerful components. I cannot reccomend watercooling to everyone however, since it still has many risks that even a skilled PC assembler may have trouble with.
Swiftech Copper Helicoid HS (MCXC-370). Replace the 43dB Pabst fan with 80mm adapter and quiet 32dB Panaflow fan (with a higher CFM at that!). The spring clip will prevent you from cracking your core too. Keeps my 75w Athlon T-Bird nice and cool. Not THAT quiet, but still lower dB than the power supply.
If you have the mounting holes and clearance for it, Zalman CNPS7000* coolers are quiet and effective. With the fan running at slow speed, you can't hear it (20 dB @ 1350 rpm). At full speed, it's still fairly quiet (25 dB @ 2400 rpm). You'll need to be careful when moving the computer in the future...but the same can be said for any massive heatsink that exceeds AMD's 300g weight limit (for Socket A, anyway).
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Did you try to balance the flow? The air mass going in has to equal the air mass going out, so if you are trying to push more air in then you take out some of your fans are not being used efficiently.
As an accomplished system builder, I will have to both agree and disagree with this statement.
While the airflow should be reasonably balanced (to keep from underutilizing the fans), you should have slightly more CFM from fans blowing in than you have from fans blowing out, and intake fans should be filtered when no cosmetic problems will arise.
If you follow this, you will find that (1) dust never gets sucked in around your CD-ROM (or floppy if you have one) drives and other spots around the case and (2) very little dust will collect inside the computer - it will collect on the filters instead.
A local place sells snap-on filters that are very easy to install and use.
Unfortunately, the system I am building that is in-progress won't accomodate one, and I'm looking for an alternate way to place the filter material.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
So THAT's what my co-workers mean when they talk about "Cat5 cable"!
I just take the tower out the back door, open the case and use either a hair dryer or reversible vacuum to blow out the excess dust.
I prefer a small can of compressed air, there's less risk of static there.
Forgot to mention, with the compressed air, I just leave the case plugged in, I don't take it anywhere.
:)
Also, if you're really paranoid about dust in your csae, buy an air purifier and keep it in the same room. Not only will it keep the inside of your case cleaner, but it'll also keep the inside of your lungs cleaner, which has a positive impact on your health anyway
...Time is the best teacher, unfortunately it kills all of its students.
Now I know why my English teacher was so terrible, her students survived...
Check the decibel ratings of heatsinks before making a purchase. Carefully shopping around can turn up even normal fan-based heatsinks that average around 22 decibels, much lower than the typical 45 or so many heatsink/fans generate. I've gotten to the point where the loudest thing in my system by a good margin is a 10k RPM HD. When it isn't spinning my case is practically silent.
YES!!! I recently built a new system for a friend of mine and used one of these Sonata Cases....WOW they're a dream.
---Rubber-bushing mounted hard drive rails 90 degrees off axis...Wonder why they hadn't thought of THAT one before...
---Huge and silent exhaust fan at the rear. I'm no good at mm...prob 8 inches diameter?
---Extra silent fan (hidden?) at the front of the case...
---Super quiet Antec power supply. Rock solid too.
Added a Seagate drive and a thermostat controlled processor heatsink, and I can hardly hear it at all...
Yeah- It sounds like a commercial for Antec, but dammit, I'm jealous of that baby and sorry I had to let her go...
Just have to pick up another one and build a new system...
Sig currently under construction. Mind the gap....
Driving a front wheel drive car isn't that bad, especially if you are doing everyday driving. (ie. not accelerate so fast you start getting torque steer or loose traction).
And I agree with the poster who said they come in handy in the winter, especially for those of us who have 4-5 months of winter (ie. Saskatchewan)
I've gone a little nuts with the air colling in my system, but it's honestly a bit of a hobby within a hobby anyhow.
h tm l
http://www.livejournal.com/users/djtodd/126109.
I think I have something like 9 fans in my case.
Yes, it's louder than some equipment rooms.
I use only one 7 inch or 4 inch AC case fan (in a hole cut right thru the face of the case, with a guard on it made out of hardware cloth) at low speed to blow air into the case
I've always thought this would be a great idea (one big, high CFM, low-velocity intake fan) with an easily-removed filter - supposedly pantyhose is good and cheap. You'd have to rig up some kind of frame with a quick release for the pantyhose, but hey, since you already had to create the hole and mount the fan, a bit more custom work shouldn't be that much more work.
Several years ago, I could not find my kitten after getting in from work. I looked all over the apartment and she was nowhere to be seen. I figured she had found some new hiding place, and relaxed my efforts.
Then I plopped down in front of my computer and hit the web. After a few minutes of clicking away on the keyboard, I began to hear a faint little distress meow. It was coming from my tower! The kitten had climbed into an empty 5.25" bay and slid herself down to the bottom of the case. I took the side door off and retrieved her. She was no less for wear and had managed to not break anything while inside. I have absolutely no idea how long she was in there, too. It was a minimum of 30 minutes.
I ended up putting a couple of strips of silver duct tape over the front of my tower to cover the open bay.
The latest batch of heatsinks coming with retail Athlon XPs are actually fairly quiet. They're not what I'd consider silent, but you likely have something louder in your system.
At this point, only overclockers should be considering 3rd party cooling solutions.
"...products that can keep your CPU cool while keeping the noise down."
None of the reviewed products was quiet in operation.
Upgraded to another heatsink+fan combination that had a 80mm 3krpm fan, and later upgraded the PSU to one that has a single 120mm fan mounted at the "bottom" of the PSU (not at the back panel). I even threw out the chassis fan. Much quieter, and circulates air so much better. My CPU temperatures used to be 55-60C with the old setup, and they're 45-50C now. The system is almost inaudible.
It boggles my mind why people still bother with small fast-rotating fans. Bigger fans rotate slower for the same amount of air moved, and are thus much quieter. I also suspect they are not as prone to failure. And you really don't need chassis/case fans when your PSU does the job.
F1 cars and piston powered planes still use air cooling, so I think it must be OK.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
Actually, both boys. We have two female cats (technically its now anyway) and two males can coexist, but not two females. Learned that after, actually read it to.
Anyway, one is part siamese, which are noisy, and thinks everytime she meows she should be fed, and she likes to meow.
The other is a tabby, who is normally good, but in the evening likes to walk around the house making this horrid noise, or just darts around like mad making noises that make her get called a gremlin.
I had a friend whose computer was inhabited by mice. Later, it stopped working. It was filled with mouse shit and (probably piss). I saw the mouse escape when i opened the case. Previously their phone wire had been chewed through.
Like the little 40mm fan that was cooling the northbridge on my KT7A-RAID, until it stopped working (dust). Now the board only sees one HD.
Hmm, my northbridge fan broke down on my KT7-RAID too. I just threw the thing away and the board works as usual. Guess I am lucky, eh?
OTOH, I have a power supply with a 120mm fan, another 120mm fan in the case, and the CPU is quite slow (Duron 800) with a 80mm fan (PS and CPU fans are temperature controlled), so it might be that those three fans are big enough to cool the entire system.
I got fed up with the noise from my Athlon XP 2000+ a few months ago. It was so loud that it could easily have been mistaken for a vacuum cleaner. I was using a generic 6-fan case (4 in the front, one on the side and one at the rear) and a Cooler Master 6700rpm heat sink to keep the heat down.
Having heard good things about the Antec Sonata, I went out and picked one up. After a bit of looking into what heat sinks were available at the local Fry's, and basically just wanting anything less noisy than the Cooler Master, I picked up a Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu.
Currently, the Zalman is spinning at 1430 RPM (fwiw the P/S fan is spinning at 1834 RPM.) It can be adjusted to suit your cooling needs with an included adjustment unit, but I was going for quiet. The computer now runs about 10c cooler than before on the CPU, and perhaps 15c cooler on the MB according to the onboard sensors. Not bad, considering that both fans are running at a fraction of the speed from the previous case. The only issue I could see someone having with the heatsink is that it's so large that it doesn't fit on all motherboards.
While the Zalman helped, the Sonata has really made a significant difference in both the area inside AND around my computer. Antec built this case with what is quite possibly the best configuration for hard drives I've ever seen in a PC case: they're mounted sideways on individual HD trays. The drives are mounted to the tray using rubber grommets, which make the two 7200RPM drives in my case nearly silent. The sound of the drives accessing, which before was a rather loud chatter, is now nearly inaudible. There are 4 internal 3.5" HD bays, so I didn't have to give anything up for the silence. Better yet, due to the design of the trays the HD cables don't block the airflow of the case since they go directly to the back of the case. The case even looks nice, with a glossy black finish on the metal parts of the case and matte black plastic on the front.
For someone who wants to throw together a system and get nearly all the parts in one box, the Sonata is an excellent case to go with. The Zalman complements the case nicely, though if you have a preferred quiet heatsink you might be better off using that - the Zalman is not compatible with all motherboards due to its large size. I'm quite happy with it on my system though (using an Asus A7V266-E).
GPL: Free as in will
To offer something constructive to balance out my flat out disagreement with your assertion, I would like to recommend Antec's "TruePower" line of power supplies for those seeking to reduce the noise of any homebrew system who have nothing left to tweak. They won't do anything for you if you're overclocking an Athlon with one of those "Tornado" fans, but if you've already got a Zalman and a Seagate then a "TruePower" might be up your alley. I don't run a hardware review site, but I have hands on experience comparing Antec's line to Vantec (i.e. Vanity-Tech -- the name is a crass joke on the customer) and other stock power supplies, after going through a heavy "tweak" phase that included building a BP6-550 into a dorm-fridge. The Antec wins hands down if you want something quiet and solid.
DEC hardware, like the personal workstation series has padding on edges to help prevent vibration, and large fans with plastic guides to guide the airflow over the important components. I imagine a lot of other higher end hardware is like this, it`s only really on the cheaper x86 machines that manufacturers cut back on nice little touches like this to reduce cost.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
And for the rest of us who want decent cooling without having actual liquid running in our cases? Oh yeah, air cooling.
With a decent choice of fans and heatsinks, you can make an air cooled box decently quiet without spending the small fortune to put in something that requires maintenance and would do great damage if it failed.
If my fan dies, my CPU shuts down. What happens if your liquid gear leaks?
You've never come across a Delta Black Label, have you?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I've seen the antfarm casemod... Kitty litter casemod? Send pics!
Just do what Dan did and add significant positive case pressure.
1. Vantec from ZipZoomFly (formally Googlegear) offers "Stealth" (their name) case fans in all sizes - the 80mm run at 21dBA, the 92mm at 20dBA. The 120mm jumps a bit to 28dBA - still not bad. And they offer volume discounts - the 80mm fans are $8.99 USD each if you buy 5 - 9, $7.79 each if you buy 10 or more. I have 4 PCs in my home office so I bought a bunch and have been going through the PCs, cleaning out dust bunnies, and replacing the fans - and it makes a big difference (found a locked old fan in the process).
2. Concur with using Zalman stuff - the CNPS7000ACU HSF is awesome - uses a 92mm fan and runs at 25dB full speed! Warning! HEAVY - Stress on MOBO if system bounced around. They also make a silent video card cooler - my next purchase.
Added not about ZipZoomFly - Free 2 day shipping on those fans! And no, I don't work for them - but they get a lot of my business.
The case came with an 80mm fan mounted to the side, venting in facing the CPU heatsink fan. There is another 80mm fan on the top, venting out. The 400W Antec power supply has a fan, which I believe vents in. I have added another 80mm fan venting into the side of the case, pointing edge-on at the Radeon GPU card. The Radeon card has an inadequate looking heat sink (not enough surface area) and a pathetic fan set in the middle of it.
I think my biggest problem is that the entire case sits inside the bottom of this enclosed desk furniture thing my wife bought. I have it placed to the far right side of the cabinet, where there are no fans on that side of the case. There is perhaps 4"-8" of head room above the case, and another 4" behind. The left side of the case (the side with the fans) is wide open to the rest of the cabinet. I finally removed the doors on this cabinet, but I still require a small fan to sit on the floor in front of the cabinet blowing fresh air in. The fan is by far the noisiest part of the operation, but without it the inside case temperature climbs above 90 F. With the fan, the inside case temperature remains around 82 F. I don't have a CPU thermometer program other than the one I see on the BIOS screen. I have noticed stability problems with the box when the case temperature reads above 90, though.
I've seen that there are two pre-pierced 80mm grills in the back near the top (but below the power supply.) I'm wondering if I should fill those with two more fans, and if so, should I orient them as intakes or exhaust fans?
Also, do you or does anyone you know have any experience with replacing the cheesy heat sink and fan on a Radeon GPU? That card could serve as a poor man's space heater (OK, maybe a rich man's space heater) and I'm afraid of burning up an investment like that.
John
Not if you have an Alpha or a Swiftech with a Pabst, then the fan might be as high as 55 decibles. That's why I used a 80mm to 120mm fan adapter and a 120mm YS Tech case fan. 130 cfm at 45 d. Works well but its still louder than my case fan at max RPM.
Only on the laptop, as they can't scale the Pentium 4 QUITE far enough down.
I use a swiftech MCX4xx (can't remeber which one but its big and copper and gots lots of al-u-minium in it) then I have a 80m to 120mm adapter mounted n a YSTECH 130 cfm fan (the neighbothood kids call it "the finger chopper." This is a kick ass aircooling solution. Might be the best. Cost ~$70