Going Fanless

[theburan]

Has anyone here tried running a c2d chip fanless for any extended period of time?

My next project is going to be a near silent pc, something that I can have sitting by my door without annoying my sister (my antec case just moves too much air to be quiet, even with the all the fans slowed down). Think but with all the fans stopped, and probably with all the lights gone.

I already have a psu picked out for the job (This guy here JonnyGURU.com - Power Supply Reviews and more! - Reviews - Inwin Powerman CQ 600W , I bought it from the reviewer after he was done with it... great way to pick up psu's :) 2nd one I've gotten from him too.) which should work really nicely in this case, since it can stop the fan when it doesn't need it.

I also have a cpu and a motherboard picked out, since i have them on hand. I'm going to be using my trusty abit fp-in9 650i board, along with my e6300 that's in my current computer (I have an e8500 on the way to replace that.) The board isn't the most power efficient, but I have it on hand, and I know it works. The cpu should hopefully be a good choice... it's proven to me to be a really flexible chip, and I'm hoping I can get it to run at it's stock clock speed along with some undervolting, hopefully enough so that it'll run without a fan.

That leads me to heatsink choice. I'm hoping to get a cooler master geminII here soon for my birthday, or if not, I'll pick up one myself since they're big and whatnot, but relativly cheap (under 30 bucks at mwave). And then I'll either use the geminII fanless, or use my scythe mine rev. b fanless and use the geminII to cool my e8500 (which I want to do because I have 3 extra scythe sflex 1600rpm fans.... they're just made for each other).

Also, I'm hoping to get an accelero s1 either for my birthday or for cheap shortly thereafter, to cool the x1800xt that I have handy. Hopefully that's not a big enough power hog to keep the psu from running silently, but again, I have it on hand, so I'll give it a try before I try and trade it for something more efficient.

I'm also probably going to use an old samsung 60gig hard drive I have handy... not super quiet, but again, it's what I have. Hopefully in the future I'll be able to pick up a compact flash card and an adapter to run the os off of, and then I can just use my esata hard drive or networking to get movies and all that fun stuff. Depends on how quiet the hard drive is.

Finally, I'm going to use my trusty sunbeam acrylic case to hold it all, for several reasons. Firstly, because I have it, and secondly, because if necessary I have the crazy idea of leaving the top panel off of the computer to allow all the hot air to leave naturally. I need to do some tests to make sure the integrity of the case is good enough to hold the psu up, but I'll be able to test that soon.

And hopefully most of this comes together soon, the psu is on the way (slowly moving across canada), and the cpu will hopefully be here monday... but I just wanted to see if anyone here had experience or opinions on this plan.

(I also had the crazy idea of using the aquagate duo viva to cool my video card and the cpu, but i'd have to mod one of the brackets so it'd mount to the cpu.... it didn't look like a very easy or good idea once I looked at it. Maybe if I could find a mount for it, but 0 fans is sorta my goal.)

Also, if I can't get the e6300 to work without a fan, i'll pick up one of the 100mm fans that would have come with the heatsink (i used that fan in a computer that I wound up donating, so I don't have one handy... and none of my 120mm fans are that silent.)

[polobunny]

The X1800 is a big heater.

[theburan]

Yeah, but I figured it's be worth it to at least give it a try before I look into something else, since i've literally got x1800xt's laying all over my room. (well, i have 2 that don't get use.... but it seems like they're everywhere sometimes)

[drew and not u]

Methinks you'll want a passive H2O loop.

[gvblake22]

The GeminII is not going to do very well as a passive heatsink. You need something with wider spaced fins that allow for more airflow to flow through it without much pressure. Check out the tower heatsinks from Noctua and the Thermalright HR-01 or IFX-14. The Cooler Master Hyper Z600 looks like it might be an OK passive heatsink but only on a 65W processor or less. For the video card, I highly recommend the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 as it will perform well without any fans on most any mid-range video card (a higher end card might require a low speed fan on it though).

[theburan]

Yeah, the accelero s1 was going to be my first choice for the video card.

And if the geminII or the scythe mine can't go fanless, I'll probably wind up running the scythe with one of these Newegg.com - Scythe SY1025SLN12M 100mm Case Fan - Case Fans (wish I still had the original fan.. oh well), since it's pretty much silent at that point anyways. It'd just be fun to try and fanless, one way or another.

[theburan]

Well, i'm feeling a little bored right now, so I'm toying with the idea of undervolting my e6300 and going fanless right now.

As a start, I turned off the fan that actually sits in the scythe heatsink, although at this point with a 200mm and a 120mm fan right next to the heatsink, I don't think it's that big of a deal. Also, the side of the case is off right now.

I also put the fsb back to 266mhz, so I'm at the stock speed for this chip, and dropped the voltage to 1.2v.

I'ts actually idling at 34c, which is several degrees cooler than it was at with the fan on, although that was also at 3.33ghz and 1.4v.

I'm running orthos to load up the cpu and see if it looks stable, as well. Under a full load this way, the temps seem to be topping out at 47c. Not super great, but not that bad either. Time to turn off more fans and just see what happens.

EDIT: Hmm, running hotter now with the other 2 fans turned off. Speedfan is reporting "cpu" as 42c but the cores at about 50. Just realized that I haven't been paying attention to the "Core0" and "Core1" values at all, just the "cpu" value. Methinks that my computer has been running hotter than I throught for the past month or two... Running orthos now.

Edit2: Giving up on fanless now, even the CPU value in speedfan is getting higher than I like, and the core values are above 65c now. Gonna have to keep a fan going on this heatsink. Twas fun to mess with though.

[azianai]

My buddy runs his E6550 passively in his Antec Solo with the Scythe Ninja.
Not OCed ofcourse, with the Tri-Cool on low, i think he pulls 38 idle and 46 on load.