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Roundup of Eight Horizontal CPU Coolers
ThinSkin writes "ExtremeTech has done a roundup of eight sideways-gusting CPU coolers under fifty bucks to see if they can keep an overclocked Athlon FX-60 from welding itself to the motherboard. In addition to temperature testing, much emphasis was placed on noise reduction, which with some coolers can be improved by adjusting fan speed or even removing the fan from the cooler."
Silicone gaskets over hard disk mounting screws, speed variable fan power supplies like the newer Antec SmartPower 2.0s, 120 MM fans in place of 60 or 80 MM fans which can do more CFMs at slower RPMs. For starts.
Well there is no money and no money...
If you mean "very little money" then you can get a lot of quiet out of those gaskets and some inexpensive ($12) fans.
If you mean "no money", then there is this little switch on the back. You flip it into "quiet" mode and your webserver will stop making any noise and will not generate any heat. Even better, it consumes no electricity in quiet mode.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The testers decided to set every fan to maximum. Unsurprisingly then, the biggest, gruntiest fan had the best cooling while being 'too loud'. The winning fans were basically the ones with a lower maximum.
I have a suggestion for the testers: Next time you're trying to compromise between noise and temperature, don't turn every fan on to maximum. Instead, decide a set temperature and measure noise levels when the CPU reaches that temperature.
I know they talk about the weight of some of these behemoths, and they touch on how they are backed well (backing plates) but these things are huge, and put alot of stress on the Mainboard.
I have the Hyper 6, if I were to ever travel with my box I would take it off. Right now it is sitting comfortabley but driving, moving this thing might crack the mainboard around the CPU.
They should institute a "wiggle test" to see how much wiggling it takes to break the mainboard when one of these monsters is connected.
I hear the ping times are horrendous though
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
For example I noticed they didn't like the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro. That supprised me, since I have the Pentium D version of the same thing and I think it's great. Why didn't they like it? Well it didn't cool as well as others... Right, see it's designed to be silent, but cool well enough. On my board, the BIOS decided that 50 degrees is the temperature at which the processor ought to operate (can alter that but I haven't). If the processor gets hotter than that, it speeds up the fan, if it drops much below that, it slows it down.
Well the net effect is I can't hear my CPU fan. When my cores are mostly idle like web surfing, it runs at like 800RPM and is totally inaudible over other noise. During intense work it spins up to like 1500RPM and you can hear it, but just barely. When told to run to maximum (something like 300RPM, don't remember) it gets to be moderatly noisy, though not annoying.
The point is that no, it doens't keep my processor ultra cool, but I've seen no reason as to why I should care. CPUs can run quite hot with no problems. What it does do is maintian my processor at a safe temperature with a minimum amount of noise. To me, that is golden.
Also something to note is that often the biggest, baddest heatsinks aren't safe. They are too heavy and can crack the motherboard. Won't happen right away, but there's maximum stresses you are supposed to put on them. It's like 500g in Intel's case. So if you buy some massive copper job that weighs a kilogram, don't be supprised if your board cracks a few months down the road.