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AMD Aircooling Round-Up of 2003

Posted by Cliff on from the cool-and-silent dept.

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."

2 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. The Aero 7.. less RPMs for more air throughput. by Larry+David · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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 :-)

  2. Re:The CPU fan is almost always quieter than the P by deacon · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

    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.