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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."
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!
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 :-)
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.
Every time i apply thermal grease to a new heatsink, it absorbs fairly rapidly into my skin.
:-)
If you believe the Arctic Silver instructions, you shouldn't do this - not because of your health, but because oil from your skin could degrade heat conductivity.
I put a little glop down then spread it paper-thin with the edge of a plastic card.
Of course I've found that good thermal grease matters much less than cleaning the lint out of your heatsink.
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
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.
I use Aerocool Deep Impacts on my Dual 2400+ on a Tyan s2460.
:)
Very quiet. It is heatexchanger/heatsink. Very neat. I can no longer hear my workstation from 3 floors up.
There is a good review on www.viperlair.com
Cheers.
Agree entirely... not sure whether this figures in the review (Cannot RTFA as it's /.'d). I stuck one of these Zalman "Flowers" on an AMD in one of my servers (also with an Enermax PSU, again with fan control). A friend came over and couldn't believe the machine was actually turned on (the fact I hadn't hooked up the case LEDs also contributed to the illusion...:)
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...
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.
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?
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.
In the random-tip department.. I've been using a little teflon pot scraper; should be available in most stores' "housewares" department. I don't remember the exact cost, but I'm sure it was well under a buck. (Obviously, get a new one; don't want bits of food in your grease ;) )
Anyway, it works nicely for the purpose, and I don't have to hunt for a card to use. Just keep it in a desk drawer with my cables & whatnots.
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).
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