has anyone had any experience of PCs without any fans ? It might be a bit late as I placed an order this morning but if anyone has any comments I could perhaps make changes on monday: Core 2 Duo E8400 3gig with a Ninja-plus fanless CPU cooler Yesico FL-550ATX Fanless 550W PSU GUP Silent enclosures for 2 160GB Segate SATA drives GF 8500GT PCIe Silent As I don't play games the Graphics card doesn't have to be great. The small drives are simply to keep the heat down - most data is on a network. Just hope the Ninja is ok for the CPU. I could always add fans but thought it would be interesting to have no fans at all. any suggestions to make it cooler as well as quite ?
You can have a very quiet machine without going fanless: - Quiet PSU (Seasonic, Corsair) - Good case (Antec P182) - Quiet HDD (latest models from WD and Samsung) - Use rubber grommets. - Big (120 mm) quality (Scythe, SilenX, Panaflo, Nexus, Sanyo Denky, etc) fans rotating at slow speeds (<1200 RPM)
The Ninja Plus should include a fan-so insist that you get it. I would be overclocking the CPU ,which everyone is doing and even Intel expects it. The 8400 has a potential of about 4MHZ,but for this you definitely need a fan on the cooler,plus others. Dont think that fanless is a good way to go-as slow revving large fans with adjustable speeds are really quiet. The GPU , the Northbridge chip and the hard drives would get quite hot without any fans,they run hot even with them-so active as opposed to passive air circulation is a must practically. Also recommend the quiet Antec 182 case,which is noise insulated,if its not too late. If you are worried about overclocking,dont be-its not difficult or dangerous with a bit of research.It does make an amazing difference to the overall computer speed.
Good luck with that combo because without any fans your machine will burn in hell... Seriously spoken, you should use at least two (front/back - 120mm/90mm) fans for the case for creating a good airflow path and also add fans to the GPU, CPU and the PSU. Don´t use enclosures for your drives, either use NoVibes for your 3.5" drives or use 2.5" drives instead (which I use for my desktop machines) = lower noise and power consumption. For reducing the noise from the fans use rubber grommets and the FanMate voltage regulator from Zalman. Don´t trust to much in those "cooling without fans" products because they don´t last for long. The only realistic substitutes to air cooling in a home environment today are: low power consumption products (for example VIA products) or using water cooling. Much more could to be said about this subject but you should reconsider regarding using fans to begin with. /C.
The heat will need to be dissipated from the computer- be it watercooling, heatsinks, fans or a combination of the above! How about a laptop? They use many powersaving features, heatsinks, very quiet fans and the 2.5 inch hard drive puts out very little heat.
Thanks everyone. I think that fans or the option to use fans will be necessary - if only for hot days - and when running intensive programs. Yes the Scythe has a 120 fan and the Yesico allows for fans. I think a 120 running slow at the back end, a120 on the Scythe and another blowing over the hard drives should be ok. The E8400 is 45 nm so should not be that hot. The 2 160 hard drives run much cooler than anything larger. not sure about the graphics - as I couldn't care less about DX10 I might just get something even more basic and cooler ? Before I forget _ how hot is hot ? Quiet is not difficult to determine but opinions seem to vary on how hot is hot any views on cool, ok, hot figs for CPU, GPU, drives ?
Going above 60C for all hardware is to be avoided on a long term basis. Fortunately, todays CPUs automatically shut off at a predetermined temperature (above 100C I think). This feature has saved me many times when I forget to turn on the external water pump while turning on my computer.
picked up the machine this morning - but forget it needs a usb keyboard. will install and start testing tonight or over the week-end at the latest. The guys who build the pc say that the bios is recording very low figs for the CPU. I am able to get software figs for the dual cores, for the drives and parts of the MB. But any recommendations for checking the temp of the graphics card ?
Most temperature monitoring tools (like Everest or Speedfan) can also check your graphics card. At the moment, my GPU is idle and 56*C. (nVidea Geforce 7950GT). The maximum allowed value is 145*C. My old graphics card (6600GT): click
Download Core Temp here. This will install two always on display small temp indicators in the taskbar for each CPU core.
first results not very encouraging. The CPU is cool enough. The core temp program won't work with the E8400 but the intel provided software claims that the cpu could run another 50 c higher and still be ok. the temps i don't like are for the hard drives - i stopped at 50 c so they may, under stress, get hotter. same drives in other machines run between 29c and 32c. Also not keen on the fanless power supply - no way o knowing the temp but it does feel hot. looks like back to an ordinary power supply and replace the hard drive enclosures with heatpipes and a fan.
Any maximum critical CPU temp which may be quoted isnt supposed to be used for normal running-not only will your CPU be quickly stressed to give a short life,but other components,Northbridge and Southbridge chips, the motherboard and its capacitors will probably expire even quicker-as will your GPU and your hard drives-the whole cooling system is interconnected and passive convection cooling just doesnt work. I feel uncomfortable when the CPU temp exceeds 50c-any higher generally means the whole system is starting to run hot.
gave up on fanless and have just taken delivery of my new pc. I changed the case to a Lian Li case which allowed the 2 sata drives to be installed on the floor of the case with a 120 fan blowing over them. On idle these now run at 30c and 28c The new software from Intel doesn't show the cpu temp but rather how much hotter it can get. My reading is 70c and is well into the green. The motherboard reads 35 to 37c and the GPU 55 to 57c. Other chips read 65 to 70 c - these were 85c when fanless. Even with a 120 fan Zalman power supply and 2 more 120 Fans the system is almost silent Perhaps one day fanless will really be possible ? but not yet or atleast not yet for me.
