What CPU can I use that requires a heatsink only without a fan!?

[MowSow]

I have tried all the fans out there Sanyo, Panasonic .. but they are all noisy at that RPM ... I have an overclocked 1GHz athlon C @1.3 GHz with an Epox MoBo. I am ready for another upgrade .. but this time I am looking for a DDR MoBo, AMD or Intel with RAID, but I was wondering if there was anything that does not require a fan, I can live with a super quiet fan .. but I mean real quiet, wisper quiet .. I will do some research when I get back home form my holiday vacation ... but if you have an advice for me that I can use .. you can have my MoBo/CPU/RAM for the price you want ... I am open to all options ...thanks

 

[SWScorch]

The VIA C3 chip doesnt require a fan, but its also very underpowered. According to MaximumPC, they ran a 1.2GHz Pentium3 Tualitin without a fan for several hours and it ran fine. No AMD chip will exist for more than a few minutes with just a passive heatsink; same with Pentium4 and ordinary P3s/Celerons.

SO basically your two choices are C3 or P3 Tualitin.

BTW, have you tried Pabst fans? Supposedly they are almost completely silent.

 

[CStroman]

My friend has an AMD K6 233 with just a passive heatsink.

 

[VicLavigne]

My old PII 400 had a heatsink only, no fan... it ran 24/7 for days at a time.

Only other option is watercooling a modern cpu.

 

[Operandi]

This Adda is the quietest 60mm fan I know of 16 dBA, you'll never hear even it?s the only fan you have. If you?re going to use it you?ll need a bad ass/very efficient HS, and overclocking is going to be out of the question. I think you could prolly use your PAL6035 with your 1.0ghz but anything beyond that might be pushing it.

If want to move up from the 1.0ghz Athlon and want to keep the noise as low as possible I would pair up this fan with the PAL8045T. That combo should let you run the latest Athlon XP while maintaining extremely low dBA levels.

 

[MoFunk]

Look no further! This is what I use and am very happy with it. I can't hear this fan over my power supply fan and it knocked my temps down 10c!

 

[Lithium381]

i had an 8088 that didn't even need a heatsink......

 

[safoo]

IF you want a quiet system, get an alpha 8045 and couple it with any quiet 80mm fans. the panaflo l1a's work really well. You can buy the fans from many sites, juss look at the hot deals forums.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

<< Look no further! This is what I use and am very happy with it. I can't hear this fan over my power supply fan and it knocked my temps down 10c! >>



I concur.

 

[VicLavigne]

The Alpha 8045 is a good heatsink, but I don't know if the panaflo L1A is enough for an overclocked system. If you really want to OC, I'd go with at least the H1A fan, which isn't that much louder.

 

[Ausone]

If you go AMD, I'd suggest Alpha 8045 and a Papst fan, either 8412NGL or 8412NGML. NGML at 19dB is quieter than the quietest of Panaflo (L1A) at 21dB, with a bit more airflow, 26.5CFM as compared to 24CFM. NGL is even quieter at 12dB but with less airflow (19.4CFM), which is still enough if you don't overclock and have good case cooling. You can get Papst fans at Plycon in the U.S. Noisecontrol.de has a huge stock of Papst fans and they ship internationally.

If you go Intel, you might like to give a try to Tualatin Celeron instead also. Tualatin PIII, as suggested above, is good but seems to be overpriced now.

Actually, I'm going to build a really quiet box and intend to use Tualatin Celeron.

 

[MarkM]

One suggestion is that the XP line gives the most "bang per degree" of the faster chips, as it's redesigned core reportedly runs about 20% cooler than older athloons at the same clock. So, for a performance cpu the 1500+ might actually run even cooler than an overclocked Duron ...

If you are totally building anew, you might consider starting with the case. I bought a Fong Kai 320 because if it's reputation for passive cooling engineering. One aspect of it that may be of interest is the incorporation of a fan duct to bring outside air directly to the CPU -- though this would seem to rule out the use of a "sucking" HS like the alphas. the point being that the performance of a HSF is really what kind of temperature DIFFERENTIAL they can generate, so if you start out with cooler air (external vs. case internal) you are already ahead of the game, and can maybe afford "give away" some differential you might otherwise buy through the noise of a more powerful fan. The FK320 design also lets you take some of the load off your HS fan by accelerating the air going into the duct through a fan mounted on the external end of the duct. I've noted people here tend to disdain the idea of fan ducts here, but Amdmb had a .interesting discussion about the merits of ducting about 6 months ago. Note one guy evn ran his athlon without a HSfan, using just the duct fan, to see if it could be done (the more practical approach would seem to be to use two low power/quiet fans on each end of the duct though, and using a copper/alum hybrid HS such as the alpha or MCXC370).

I'm not ready to report on the success of my build, but I plan to post when I am.

 

[SWScorch]

Markm, I too have the Fong Kai 320. Once I bought the Alpha PAL8045, I had to remove the duct and reverse the fan to act as an exhaust. Then, I cut two blowholes on the side panel: one intake down by the PCI cards, and one exhaust above the CPU.

Before I had the PAL8045 I used an SK-6, and the duct helped enormously. Even though the fan in that location is usually an exhaust fan, bringing in the cooler outside air had a tremendous impact, and then hot air was exhausted out the power supply (which is now doing an even better job now that I bought a PSU with two fans)

 

[im2smrt4u]

Go for the Alpha 8045 and a nice quiet fan. The panaflos are nice, but I recommend this. It is a hair quieter than the panaflos. As far as the overclocking goes, you may be pushing it with the above setup, but if you are looking to upgrade, a Palamino core should run cooler.

Can I buy the MoBo/CPU/RAM now!?

im2smrt4u

 

[cmaMath13]

You want quiet? Here you go: http://www.koolance.com/

 

[Becks2k]

get a 1800+ athlon xp a pal8045 and the 15dba or whatever papst fan... koolance isn't going to be quieter than that, cooler maybe.

the problem with this is 15dba= really quiet. a harddrive is ~30dba... 30dba + 15dba = 30.00001 or something stupid.

human ears can only hear a difference of 1dba so harddrive + papst vs panaflo + harddrive you won't tell the difference.

 

[markrb]

I have an Athlon 1700 + XP and originally I had an OCZ Gladiator with a loud Delta 60mm fan.
I couldn't take it anymore.
I bought the Alpha PAL 8045 from svcompucycle for $29.99 without a fan.
It is now listed as $39.99 without a fan, but keep an eye on the price as it goes on sale often.
I coupled it with a Sunon high speed 42.5 CFM fan. I needed to mod the heatsink to make it fit my motherboard.
I can still hear the fan, but the difference is night and day. It is a light woosh as opposed to a hair dryer.
If you wish to hear some fans before buying check them out here.
If you want to hear what I went from. First listen to the black label 60mm Delta, then listen to the 80mm high speed Sunon.
I now have my sanity back.
My temps are actually better.
If you wanted to you might get away with a lower speed fan that is quieter.

Mark

 

[Ausone]

<< the problem with this is 15dba= really quiet. a harddrive is ~30dba... 30dba + 15dba = 30.00001 or something stupid. >>

Right. The total noise is to a great extent determined by the loudest source of noise. This means you have to quiet down everything, including HD, case fans, PSU, not just CPU fan. Sometimes your video card fan can be the loudest, as was the case with my GF2Ultra, which I got rid of.

MowSow, in your setup, I think you'd better replace 75GXP with Seagate Barracuda IV and/or use a drive enclosure like SilentDrive. If you really need RAID, then you might want to avoid Barracuda IV, though.
Your PSU, which happens to be the same one as I have, may not be the quietest one on the market, either. You might like to replace it by Enermax modded with Papst fan sold by noisecontrol.de or quietpc's PSU or the FCA version of Enermax.

As far as CPU goes, since Tualatin Celeron runs really cool even if overclocked, much cooler than Athlon XP, it may be better to go with it. You might be able to run without a fan if you are lucky. Even if you aren't, you can run it with a stock Intel HSF, which is said to be quiet, or use your Alpha6035 with Papst 8412 NGL using a 60mm-to-80mm fan adapter (you may have to replace your clip for Alpha too). Performance of Tualatin Celeron isn't so bad really, particularly if you overclock it.

In general, the less heat, the less cooling required, hence the less noise.

BTW, I'm not an Intel fan at all and currently running a Thunderbird 800Mhz@901Mhz with Abit KT7. I'll probably upgrade this box with Athlon XP or P4 Northwood, but I'll use a Tualatin Celeron or PIII with my second box for the maximum quietness.

 

[Zap]

I built a quiet system recently. The noisiest part of it all was the power supply, which was a dual-fan Leadman Powmax LP6100C 300W - the box said it was a quiet design, but it still ended up being the noisiest part of the system. The video card was a fanless job (first a Savage 2000, haha, then an ATI Rage Pro Fury). The hard drive was a Maxtor 540DX (formerly Quantum), which seems whisper-quiet. The CPU was a P4 1600 using the retail boxed HSF, which is near silent. It was still a pretty fast system (I play games on another system with a better video card). Oh yeah, the northbridge (VIA p4x266) didn't have a fan either.

Ausone is onto something with the Tualatin Celeron probably running really cool. How about one of those with an Alpha PEP66 heatsink cooled by a Nidec Gamma 28 or 30? That would be a decent system while running near silent for the HSF.

 

[flywheel]

<< Look no further! This is what I use and am very happy with it. I can't hear this fan over my power supply fan and it knocked my temps down 10c! >>



That thing bolts to the mobo!!! That's scary to me! I mean...with that big of a heat sink I can understand not wanting to tear your socket off but wouldn't you have to drill holes in the mobo??? Is that alright to do?:Q

 

[peacefulsun]

I think most hard drives make more noise than good 80mm fan. So if you are building a system with a normal EIDE hard drive, you can not get absolutely quiet system. So don't let this noise issue limit your choice of CPU. Just get a good Heatsink like Alpha 8045 and put a nice 80mm fan on it. I myself use the enermax adjustable fan and leave it at the slowest speed so it make no noise in deed. With another enermax fan at the front bottom, my 1600+ runs at 40C fully loaded with sys temp 30C and ambient temp 20C. And most importantly, it's quiet.

 

[markrb]

AMD spec calls for motherboard holes for heatsinks. You don't need to drill anything.
Heatsinks have been becoming so large that the clips on the sockets can no longer handle the strain.
That is why all AMD Athlon XP compliant motherboards must have the holes.
It is also a safer way to install the heatsink. You are much less likely of cracking the CPU when installing
the heastsink.
I am not sure, but I think new Intel boards have to have them too, but I could be wrong.

Mark

 

[Daovonnaex]

The PowerPC G4 has only a passive heatsink, and it's uber-powerful. Hell, you can overclock a 800 G4 to 900 still only using a passive heat sink.

 

[WarCon]

And I think that the PowerPC finally got support for DOOM................ J/K (Gotta love Mac for struggling against popularity this long)

 

[joinT]

<< This Adda is the quietest 60mm fan I know of 16 dBA, you'll never hear even it?s the only fan you have. If you?re going to use it you?ll need a bad ass/very efficient HS, and overclocking is going to be out of the question. I think you could prolly use your PAL6035 with your 1.0ghz but anything beyond that might be pushing it. >>



I've got a ThermalRight CB-6L modded to use 2 60mm AddA 16.1 dBa fans. Basically using 2 fans of the same spec doesn't double the dBa - it only raises it by 1 or 2. But the CFM remains much closer to doubled. So you're looking at 32CFM @ approx. 17-18dBa. if you had a rheobus, or even the fan voltage switch in a Lian-Li case, you could easily asjust it to be silent & safe @ the same time.