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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.
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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.
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.
Google cache does it. Why not slashdot? Sites that don't want the mirror could have a tag to disallow it and suffer slashdotting instead.
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.