Passive cooler for G2 (rPGA988b)

[yaxattax]

Hi all,

I'm looking for some help with a particular problem. I'm going to be building a mini-ITX fanless server system. Here are the main components (and I'm not looking for suggestions for alternatives)

SuperMicro X9SCV-Q
Intel 2720QM

Details on the supermicroboard can be found here http://supermicro.co.uk/products/motherboard/Xeon/QM67/X9SCV-Q.cfm

As you can see (from supermicros page at the bottom), supermicro provide a cooler model for use with this board. However it has a fan. I'm thinking about getting it and just removing the fan, but I'm a little afraid that the cooler will be too puny for the CPU. I am going to disable turbo to reduce the heat generated but of course with all 4 cores active it may still reach maximum heat dissipation. I would like to know, if the CPU would be okay with that heatsink alone, or if there are any suggestions for beefier coolers for this socket. I need to be able to purchase the cooler in the UK. I don't mind finding a case to accomodate a larger cooler.

I've looked at the following case https://linitx.com/product/12488 which claims fanless operation by convection, but only for TDP < 10W CPUs ...

Any advice appreciated.

Regards,

Yax
https://linitx.com/product/12488

 

[God Mode]

Heh you're doing what I was planning on doing with the same exact parts. I don't think any 'off the shelf' solution exists for this particular socket with regards to wanting it to be fanless. The only viable solution I found was to modify an existing heatsink (You'll need a shim to prevent cracking the core) with custom brackets/screws or spend a lot of money on a custom part.

If you dont mind me asking, where and how much did you pay for the mobo and cpu?

 

[heymrdj]

You'll need a custom cooler setup in you do this, and I'm not sure you're aware of just how massive it will need to be. If the cooler is anything but vertical it would be so heavy and have so much mass (copper isn't light) that you sould most likely need to build a support into the chassis as well. On top of that you'll still need air flow. Servers work because they force air from front to back in the chassis, that way they used "passive" coolers. My older servers have dual 115W 3.8Ghz Xeons in them, and they have passive copper heatsinks. But there's also 8 fans in the chassis just aiming at the wide open processor coolers, let alone the fans aiming at everything else. If even one of those 8 fans fails the processors go into limp mode (lowered wattage and speed) and if 2 fail the system sets a 10minute shutdown timer. More than 2 and it's instant off.

*If* you have airflow through the case, then retrofitting a Thermalright 120 to the processor *should* work. If you have no airflow in the case I'm not sure what to tell you. Things will continue to get hotter and hotter until a shut off occurs. Even if takes 7 hours to build up that heat, closed off chassis just don't convect as well as one would expect.

 

[yaxattax]

I appreciate it will get hot, but I'm not sure you appreciate that the parts I've chosen are actually mobile CPU parts. The chipset has a TDP of 4W, and the CPU has a TDP of 45W. Thats a far cry from a dual 115W Xeon setup (with what is presumably a power hungry chipset as well).

I'm not saying you're wrong, but if these parts can go into a mobile chassis and operate well (albeit with a puny, loud fan), then I imagine it is possible to do so in a larger chassis with a larger, fanless heatsink? As I said, I am partial to getting a larger case if necessary. If absolutely necessary, I could have a single chassis fan (120mm or 140mm), but it is essential it is inaudible from beyond 1 ft in an otherwise silent environment.

I've found the following heatsink http://www.cooljagusa.com/productshow.asp?id=431 but I cannot find it being retailed anywhere in the UK...

God Mode, I've not actually bought the parts yet (I'll refrain from doing so until I'm ready to commit to the build - this heatsink is the last piece of the long long puzzle I've been agonising over on and off for around 6 months). http://www.lambda-tek.com sell both the CPU (~£300) and the motherboard (~£200).

 

[God Mode]

God Mode, I've not actually bought the parts yet (I'll refrain from doing so until I'm ready to commit to the build - this heatsink is the last piece of the long long puzzle I've been agonising over on and off for around 6 months). http://www.lambda-tek.com sell both the CPU (~£300) and the motherboard (~£200).

The 2630qm (non-engineering sample BS) seem to average $200 on the US ebay. The motherboard is at most $200 from most US retailers (newegg, provantage etc) that carry it.

I don't know if you care but $400usd + some shipping vs £500gbp difference would yield a custom heatsink from many fabricators.

 

[yaxattax]

Cheers dude for the advice, but theres a few things you've not considered:

First - Import Duty/Customs Tax @ 20%. Its not a dead cert I'll run into that, but its a bit of a chance and if I get the charge its significant (and causes more butthurt than just paying upfront)

Second (and you couldn't have known) - I was originally considering that CPU, but it doesn't support VT-d and VT-d is essential as I'll be running xen virtual machines using this very nice passthrough feature http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/VTdHowTo

Of course, I might try and import from the USA if I find a retailer selling that cooljag heatsink that is also selling the 2720QM and the supermicro mainboard.

Just out of interest, can you point me in the direction of these custom heatsink providers? I should have a look. At the moment, I'm quite willing to pay ...

 

[God Mode]

Any local machineshop worth their salt should be able to make one or at least modify an existing sink with a custom mount bracket. I would try a thermalright axp140 with minimal intake. You can also search google for "custom heatpipe heatsinks".

Newegg in the US has a heatsink for the motherboard in question which would be useful to salvage the backplate (cheaper than a custom). Are you certain xen vtd works with the supermicro board and cpu?

 

[yaxattax]

Well I've asked Supermicro if the board supports VT-d, and they replied affirmative, and that it needs to be enabled in the bios - there is no reason it should not work with xen. My guess is their compatibility list is simply incomplete. I can't imagine too many people are trying to run servers using mobile parts, but supermicro has created a board, and they generally do server oriented parts ...

I've seen the official supermicro heatsink, its available in the UK as well, but I was concerned that by itself it was too puny (see my original post). I suppose I could use it to get the backplate though, assuming it utilises one ..

 

[yaxattax]

Sorry for doublepost:

I found this: http://atechfabrication.com/ but its pretty darn expensive - looking at 700 USD for a case with CPU cooler.

 

[Concillian]

I appreciate it will get hot, but I'm not sure you appreciate that the parts I've chosen are actually mobile CPU parts. The chipset has a TDP of 4W, and the CPU has a TDP of 45W. Thats a far cry from a dual 115W Xeon setup (with what is presumably a power hungry chipset as well).

You ever seen a laptop with a 45W TDP CPU in it without a fan? What about without a heatpipe cooler?

45W is not a trivial load, and passive cooling is going to require a case that's larger than you're looking at. This CPU in a small case is not going to be passively cooled.

Truly passive cooling is very difficult and not trivial. You need fans somewhere unless you're looking at some very significant custom work. I think you basically have 3 options:
- larger case with large passive cooler
- custom aluminum case + heatpipes
- quiet fans to provide some airflow

 

[heymrdj]

You ever seen a laptop with a 45W TDP CPU in it without a fan? What about without a heatpipe cooler?

45W is not a trivial load, and passive cooling is going to require a case that's larger than you're looking at. This CPU in a small case is not going to be passively cooled.

Truly passive cooling is very difficult and not trivial. You need fans somewhere unless you're looking at some very significant custom work. I think you basically have 3 options:
- larger case with large passive cooler
- custom aluminum case + heatpipes
- quiet fans to provide some airflow

This is what I was trying to say, it's not a small load by any means.

I read a thread where a guy used this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233029

He used it "passive" in the way that he still had 5 chassis fans. The system would idle, but it was at 55C just idling, and any amount of work load, especially all 4 cores, would cause the system to throttle or shut down. During summer in his apt (85F ambient) it could barely even idle without throttling. He gave up and put a fan on it, which was an S-Flex, and he couldn't even hear the fan. The fan ran at 600RPM, which is super quiet, and it brought temps down to 25C idle and 52C full load.

 

[yaxattax]

Thats fine, and I acknowledged all three solutions in one form or another.

Reason I can't use the Supermicro recommended heatsink is cause the fan is puny (and will therefore almost certainly be loud). I also doubt that the Supermicro heatsink + some case fans will be sufficient. I was hoping someone would be able to suggest a big, beefy heatsink that can fit on that socket, but it seems custom work is my only hope. I've got a few requests going with retailers, hoping to get some advice with regards to larger heatsinks for the socket.

Any cases that can fit a 140mm fan that aren't full desktop size cases? I'm not really sure what size case I want, but I'd like to keep it small-ish if I can.

Custom heatpipe cases exists, and readily available (they confirmed they could do it for that motherboard), but the prices were simply amazing. Something like 700 USD, almost as much as the rest of the server...

Thanks all for advice so far, and any further advice still appreciated.

 

[yaxattax]

Update:

I've decided to try the small Supermicro heatsink, and to reduce its noise I'm going to get a fan adaptor so I can mount a 120mm fan onto it. I'll run as quiet a fan as possible, looking at akasa apache, and I'll seal any gaps between the fan adaptor to ensure no airflow leakage. I'm hoping that will be sufficient, provided the fan has a good enough static pressure, but perhaps the elevation of the fan from the heatsink can mitigate the fans blind spot.

Its a cheap solution so it doesn't hurt to try, and if it doesn't work I'm stuck with a bunch of hardware until I can find a better cooling solution. I'll post back when I've tried it.

 

[Primergy]

Hi,
I am in the very same spot with the very same motherboard!
YES, I would be very interested on results and noise levels of the stock cooler!

Has anyone found a source to purchase the aforementioned (link) Jagcool BUF-E anywhere?!

Not really an option given the price but here are two more models which will fit and offer slightly beefier coolers:
http://www.ieishop.com/product/product.cfm?pid=6066
http://www.ieishop.com/product/product.cfm?pid=6067
Cheapest I found was ~$65

Very similar to other solutions from Cooljag:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dynatron-i2-Intel-Socket-G-PGA-988-Active-1U-CPU-Cooler-/110810526651

Going custom, many old heatsinks with a somewhat square base
should have enough cooling capacity to deal with 45-55W!
Old Xeon stuff, some Dell beasts are just huge copper blocks for example.
Any cheap shop can remove parts of the fins and get holes in there!I would still recommend using a backplate, which by layout, would have to be from a cooler for socket G1/G2.

Here is what I did on my P-Socket BCM board:
- Mounted a 120mm fan somewhere above the stock cooler.
- The fan speed regulation on these boards can be pretty neat, so I was able to tweak it down to ~1200rpm. If I push the system, it will go up to ~1600rpm, keeping the CPU under the set mark of 60C.
- What is different though is that the stock cooler that board came with is higher and beefier and probably offers better cooling despite the 50x50mm base compared to the stock cooler's 60x60mm base for the G2 socket on the Supermicro.

 

[Primergy]

Has anyone found a source to purchase the aforementioned (link) Jagcool BUF-E anywhere?!

Answer from Jagcool directly:

"We do have the BUF-E available with $29 each. It come with mounting hardware. Please let me know"

 

[yaxattax]

Hi,

I can't tell you much at the moment. I do have the heatsink, and I can tell you a few things about the supermicro heatsink.

1) The fan is a delta fan. They are known for being noisy
2) The heatsink is 60mm base, but the fan mounting is actually 40mm (and by extension, the fan is a 40mm fan) - this really annoyed me, because I had bought a 60-80mm fan adaptor, and now I need a 40-60mm fan adaptor, and will have a big chain of fan adaptors in order to fit a 120mm fan to this heatsink.
3) I looked the delta fan up online. They actually provide a detailed spec sheet. It says it has a noise level of ~40 dB when running at 6500 RPM. It also claims the fan has a static pressure of ~ 5.5 mm/m^2 (I think, I don't remember units properly and will provide a link to the spec sheet later). This worries me somewhat, as my 120mm fan can't even provide a fraction of that static pressure. Will just see how it goes.
4) The supermicro heatsink came with a backplate.

For me, I'm not concerned at all by temps as long as I can run the thing without throttling, and quietly as possible. I'd like to avoid custom if I can, since I don't really know where to go to get some custom work done. I've asked quite a few heatsink manufacturers if they have any offerings for this particular socket, which has mostly been greeted with no replies or "sorry we don't, we'll let you know in the future if we do".

Problem with the cooljag is that I need it to be available in the UK. If they will ship here, I'll consider it.

Let us know what you get, and how it does. I'm still waiting for my motherboard at the moment, and I expect it won't arrive for another week or two, so I'm not going to be able to do much, apart from assemble the fan adaptors onto the heatsink and try and guess how well it'll work.

Pics would be good too I'll post some when I can.

Cheers,

Yax

EDIT:

I asked earlier for cases that fit 140mm fans. I found it myself http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/product06.php?pr_index=480&cl_index=1&sc_index=25&ss_index=64 and it has a top exhaust, which could play really well with the cpu exhaust feeding into a top exhaust. The only thing is that I am using a DC-DC power supply, so I'll need to cover up the PSU hole (and preferably not with a PSU), and find a way to mount the AC-DC adaptor input solidly to the case so it doesn't get damaged by movement.

 

[Primergy]

I never was at a point where I had to include static pressure in my thoughts about cooling.
The holes on the motherboard line up perfectly with those of a 60mm fan.
From my parts pile I pulled an old Thermaltake Volcano 10, designed to cool CPUs with a TDP of ~62W.
Cooler has a 60x67mm base, fits just fine sideways. A little more and it will create problems with the surrounding components on the board.
Plan now is to take a 60mm fan as a hole template, borrow the neighbors drill-press for 5min and see if I can make it work.
PS: (Volcano 11(Cu) and Volcano 7 (Al) will fit 80mm instead of 60mm fans.

Parallel to this, I am currently waiting for an answer on how to order directly from Jagcool as their page does does not include a shop.
If interested, I can offer to ship one to the UK - declared as a gift if needed.
Price: Cooler, shipping within US + shipping to UK (probably ~$15, but keep in mind the exchange rate advantage)

That Lian Li case is neat, I am actually using a PC-Q07 for my socket-P BCM board. (Power supply is on-board, 19V in, cheap used laptop brick)
http://jan.mafoo.de/waku/P3134348_resize.JPG
http://jan.mafoo.de/waku/P3134351_resize.JPG
Seems like I was off with what I said before about the RPMs, has been months since I had a look at it. It's nothing but a remote controlled P2P & services slave.

The Supermicro will end up the regular cheap ATX case which housed generations of media PC setups. Still looking for a CPU on Ebay...
Budget says NO to any Sandy-Bridge i7, maybe I can win an i5 for cheap.

 

[yaxattax]

I double checked static pressure figures, the 120mm fan should be more than capable. I'm going to machine a relatively thick (6mm) acrylic sheet to sit atop the heatsink and provide an interface to attach a 80->120mm fan adaptor, thus allowing me to have a 120mm fan on a 60mmx60mm heatsink (the fan attachments are actually for a 50mm fan). Since I'm waiting for the acrylic to arrive, I'm still holding off on the build, but I don't expect that job to take long. In the mean time I'm going to check that the clearance for what I plan is adequate, else I'm a little buggered.

 

[God Mode]

Did you buy the other components yet? My needs changed so I killed the supermicro idea and placed my 2720qm into a laptop.

I'm now waiting for ivybridge before I make further purchasing decisions as having the HD4000 gpu would be a very big plus for me.

 

[MarkLuvsCS]

Someone else had purchased a pretty awesome looking case that would seem to fit the bill. Here is the forum post, and here is the company product page. Seems like it should work perfectly fine as long as there isn't a need for too many drives. The case with an 80w PSU (should be more than fine considering it's all laptop parts anyway) is $286. There are other options of course, but maybe it would do the job. I know it's fairly pricey but it seems like a pretty good deal for a silent case + cooling system.

 

[Binky]

I see a small non-heatsink case with a quad core 45W TDP chip. I'm guessing that 100% fanless isn't possible. You could certainly devise something where the CPU doesn't have a fan, but it uses the airflow from another fan in the system.

Totally fanless seems unrealistic. It does sound like an interesting project though.

 

[Primergy]

A little heads up:

The Supermicro board does NOT allow user adjustments of any Fan settings in the BIOS.
At least not in the Version I found on my board.

The result is that a 3pin fan will scream at full speed, "intelligent" RPM control will only take place with a 4pin fan.
The board will NOT complain if no fan is connected meaning you could also install your own fan arrangement. (eg. 7V or 5V for reduced noise level, or a fan with manually adjustable RPMs)

I got lucky on Ebay, board fired right up in a temp. setup using 2x4GB Kingston and that CPU. Very pleased so far!

 

[yaxattax]

I killed the fanless idea. I accepted the need for fans, and chose the quietest ones possible. I've committed to the build and have all the components, and the last piece of the puzzle is forging an acrylic adaptor for my 120mm fan to fit onto the Supermicro's 50mm fan mounts.

Interesting that the fan speed can't be controlled, I've got 4pin PWM fans anyway though so I should be okay on that front. I believe I might be able to control the fan speeds from within Linux (or my xen dom0) by poking some values into some system files, so if I really have a problem with noise I can try that. Once assembled (won't be for a while 'til I've made my fan adaptor) I'll load test it quite a bit.

I did also look at the heatsink cases solutions. I found quite a few vendors for these solutions but none as cheap as $289. Even that is quite a price to stomach, I paid £80 for my Lian-Li case and I wasn't even happy about that. I've not searched a lot through HD-Plex's site (mostly because I've already committed now), but from a quick look it seems they don't have anything that fits my socket. I found other vendors who had products that fit my socket, or would customise, but I was looking at $500+ ...

Primergy, glad to hear you got lucky on the CPU on ebay. I consulted with my wife on that front (because she goes nuts if I waste my money, even though its mine, and I'm already £150 over budget on this build >_<). She advised me to avoid the ebay route, so I took her advice and paid full price for the CPU, £300 (ouch).

Just waiting for my little acrylic sheets to arrive in the post so I can get working. I checked last night and the board should have clearance for what I'm trying to do (but possibly only because the ram doesn't point upwards). Once I've forged the adaptor then I'll install motherboard, CPU and RAM into the case. The only other thing I need to think about is securing the DC input to the DC-DC adaptor somewhere on the case that a little tugging won't damage it.

Unfortunately for me, hardware is only half the story and I already know that setting up all my virtual machines is going to be a pain in the proverbial rear ...

 

[Primergy]

I stumbled across this article:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/intel-z68-chipset-smart-response-technology-ssd-caching-review/2

At the end of the first paragraph they mention support for the Intel QM67 chipset. I might build a test setup to confirm that this feature is supported on this Supermicro - if there is interest.

 

[yaxattax]

I don't have any special interest in this setup myself, since I am using an SSD as the only disk (noise, energy, etc). I'm sure many people who might be interested in using this board for other purposes would be quite interested in such a setup, e.g hybrid media center / server. If you can afford the time to build a test setup for this purpose it would be fantastic, as the knowledge is important. I have to say, if the chipset supposedly supports it, I would be very suprised if Supermicro hsn't got it working on this board. If you do test this, let us know the results