Fanless colling for the CPU.

[Glo.]

Case has arrived.

Previously Metis Plus has had O-LED ring around the fan. Currently, Metis Plus has just Iris 12 fan. I think Raijintek has stopped the production to make a little update to this case.

Second thing. Raijintek updated the design, slightly, and right now it has 2.5 inch drive cage just next to MoBo panel, and behind the PSU. Very interesting, to say the least.

Overall we are pretty happy with it. Now wait for the rest...

 

[Glo.]

Its actually funny but in my country, one of retail lines have made test of build that was completely fanless.

What they have done is that they used Raijintek Tisis Core Cooler on the CPU, and at best while in gaming the CPU got to 55-60 degrees celsius and it was actually Core i5 8400 CPU, so 65W TDP.

The other thing what they have done is they took off the fans from Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1060 6 GB GPU, and used it completely fanless in a build while undervolting the GPU. The GPU heated up to 88 degrees.

Later they have tested the Palit KalmX GTX 1050 Ti, and the GPU heated up to 80 degrees, which is ... tolerable.

One note: the case was closed while tests were done.

So in the end. There is no concern for me with CPU temperatures, but rather GPU. Its good news after all. The GPU is faced up with its cooler, and on top of the case are ventilation holes.

Its actually freaking possible to run this fanless.

Check out the film, if anyone is interested.

 

[Gellért]

Its actually funny but in my country, one of retail lines have made test of build that was completely fanless.

What they have done is that they used Raijintek Tisis Core Cooler on the CPU, and at best while in gaming the CPU got to 55-60 degrees celsius and it was actually Core i5 8400 CPU, so 65W TDP.

The other thing what they have done is they took off the fans from Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1060 6 GB GPU, and used it completely fanless in a build while undervolting the GPU. The GPU heated up to 88 degrees.

Later they have tested the Palit KalmX GTX 1050 Ti, and the GPU heated up to 80 degrees, which is ... tolerable.

One note: the case was closed while tests were done.

So in the end. There is no concern for me with CPU temperatures, but rather GPU. Its good news after all. The GPU is faced up with its cooler, and on top of the case are ventilation holes.

Its actually freaking possible to run this fanless.

Check out the film, if anyone is interested.

Great stuff

 

[Glo.]

Slight update:

We have another piece to the puzzle in the OP:

Seasonic X-460FL2 Fanless PSU. Will be great addition.

Additionally: Arcitc has just realeased two Passive coolers for both platforms: Intel's, and AM4 from AMD. Arctic Alpine 12 Passive for Intel platform, and Alpine AM4 Passive for AMD.

Arctic tested two CPUs for their marketing purposes, with those Coolers: Core i3 7300T, and A12 9800E. Both 35W.

What immediately was apparent was gigantic difference in temperature between both platforms.

Core i3 7300T got to 78 degrees C, under load, and 9800E got to only 56 degrees under load. Wonder why?

Well first of all: Core i3 has thermal paste under the IHS, and Bristol Ridge soldered. Secondly - the Core i3 is much more dense, than BR APU, which results in higher heat density, than on BR. Cores are more spread out on BR. i3 is very dense on this front. For passive cooling the area which dissipates heat is important.

I absolutely wish that AMD would be doing 35W versions of their desktop Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 CPUs, but on the other hand, there is nothing stopping me, from locking down for example Ryzen 5 2600 to 35W in BIOS, and let it do the magic with clocking itself, under load.

The only pickle right now: are there going to be fanless next gen. GPUs.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Sounds very interesting! For the GPU, isn't it good to position the GPU somehow so the heatpipes are located vertically? The fluids have to rise, then drop. If horizontal, it won't be able to do so as much. Of course, you may be limited by your case.

My EVGA 850 G3 fan can be annoying, so I put a Noctua NF-F12 on top, and makes it almost silent.

GPUs are little more tolerant about temperatures than CPUs. Please tell us your full system configuration when you get it set up!

 

[Glo.]

I don't think there is a thread for passive cooling on this forum, and it may be good option for spreading the knowledge about this type of cooling, and general discussion about this type of cooling and sharing ideas for builds, and potentially inspirations for them


The build is thoroughly "theorycrafted" by us, and we are tinkering it to finest details, like: placement of side panel, with removed acrylic glass, that would help with the natural flow of cold-hot air, removing every part that would make the flow of air worse, etc.

All of those details are extremely important for passive cooling, especially considering this is SFF build, with ATX PSU.

Sounds very interesting! For the GPU, isn't it good to position the GPU somehow so the heatpipes are located vertically? The fluids have to rise, then drop. If horizontal, it won't be able to do so as much. Of course, you may be limited by your case.

My EVGA 850 G3 fan can be annoying, so I put a Noctua NF-F12 on top, and makes it almost silent.

GPUs are little more tolerant about temperatures than CPUs. Please tell us your full system configuration when you get it set up!

All of passive builds are using horizontally mounted GPUs, and they stay well within standard operational temperatures. So no problem at all here.

As of right now, there aren't any 35W TDP CPUs available in my country. In theory good idea would be just buying standard CPU, and lock it up in BIOS to 35W, and use it this way, but it also has few other drawbacks.

 

[UsandThem]

I don't think there is a thread for passive cooling on this forum, and it may be good option for spreading the knowledge about this type of cooling, and general discussion about this type of cooling and sharing ideas for builds, and potentially inspirations for them

I think it fits in the cooling forum just fine. Fanless PCs are a very niche thing, and having a separate sub-forum would be a waste IMO, and it would have about as much traffic as the 'discussion club' sub-forum.

I think most people are in the "I really don't care how loud it is" and "I don't want to hear my fans" clubs. But different strokes for different folks.

 

[Billb2]

For the last 10 years or so heat pipes have wicks in them so convection and gravity have no effect on heat transfer liquid flow nor gas flow.

 

[Glo.]

I think it fits in the cooling forum just fine. Fanless PCs are a very niche thing, and having a separate sub-forum would be a waste IMO, and it would have about as much traffic as the 'discussion club' sub-forum.

I think most people are in the "I really don't care how loud it is" and "I don't want to hear my fans" clubs. But different strokes for different folks.

Thats what I thought that it is a good idea, that this thread can morph into general discussion about Passive cooling, sharing ideas, and information for builds.

 

[Billb2]

Computer cooling:

Cheap
Quiet
Effective

Choose any two.

 

[Glo.]

Computer cooling:

Cheap
Quiet
Effective

Choose any two.

As always: it depends.

You can have all of this, but it relies on various amount of factors. Most important - allowing the air freely move in and out of the case.

 

[Glo.]

Few things have been released for fanless cooling. Arcitc has released two passive coolers: Alpine 12 Passive, and Alpine AM4 Passive. Alpine 12 is for 1151 socket, and AM4 is, wel... for AM4.

It appears that best CPUs for fanless cooling are those which have soldered IHS. AM4 has in general lower temperatures on AM4 CPUs, compared to Alpine 12, because AM4 CPUs are soldered. They can work with up to 47W TDP, but with case fans. Without any cooling, apart from convection - there may occur throttling with heavier workloads, with 47W TDP CPUs.

Best case for fanless cooling always will be open Air. Something like Thermaltake Core P3. However, there is new mITX case that appears to be quite good in design for fanless cooling. Raijintek Ophion, and Ophion Evo. there will be a lot of space for CPU heat dissipation, if you remove top and bottom dust filters you get perfect convection layout, and the GPU will be on the otyher side of the case, with heatsink vertically placed, which also will be great for convection, if you have passively cooled GPU like GTX 1050 Ti KalmX, or something like that.

Silverstone NJ450-SXL is the first passively cooled SFX PSU. Gets pretty "toasty" under, however that was designed by Silverstone this way.