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Anyone built a system with 35W TDP AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+?
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Author:  trimtab [ Mon Oct 02, 2006 12:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Anyone built a system with 35W TDP AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+?
I am looking to build a new system for HDTV recording and to meet WAF expectations it *must* be quiet. So according to the attached link I see that AMD now has a Dual core Athlon 64 X2 3800+ that has a peak Thermal Design Power (TDP) of 35W which should be a lot easier to cool quietly.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/Pro ... 76,00.html

I expect that it should be possible to cool such a system passively with heat sinks. Combined with a fanless power supply that would make a perfect entertainment center ready system.

So has anyone built a system with one of these?

I was looking to use the GIGABYTE GA-M55plus-S3G Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 ATX AMD Motherboard. If anyone has input on it. Here are the specs:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Mot ... uctID=2283

Any suggested cases?
Author:  baishen78 [ Mon Oct 02, 2006 3:08 pm ]
Post subject: 
I'd be really quesy trusting the cpu without a fan. Why not get a Zalman cooler? Even with a fan, it's quiet.
Author:  agentsmithitaly [ Thu Oct 05, 2006 7:31 am ]
Post subject: 
You could do it quite succesfully, just buy a good HTPC case with rear ventilation holes and big fans, at least 80x80 mm.
Check height and items positioning on the motherboard to avoid buying something that would be incompatible.
You can have a look at this chart http://www.hwupgrade.it/forum/showthread.php?t=986409
Although it's in italian you can look the screenshot of these passively cooled CPUs, they indeed used a case fan. You must be under 15 Watts to passively cool without any fans, or use water cooling or that heavy and expensive cases with heatsinks on their surfaces...
Author:  marc.aronson [ Sat Oct 07, 2006 2:16 pm ]
Post subject: 
So I know no one is going to believe this, but... I've built a very quiet system using the stock intel cooler. Here is what I used:

1. Antec Overture II case. It's full size and designed for an HTPC.

2. Intel P930 CPU

3. Asus motherboard.

The CPU fan does make a lot of noise when it is running full speed, but my BIOS will throttle it down automatically as long as the CPU temp isn't above some threshold. Once you slow the stock Intel fan to under 1,900 RPMs it is virtually silent, and the system is able to stay under 40 degrees C at these low fan speeds, even when under load. The full specs for my system are below.

I also found this to be true for an older P4 2.8 GHZ system I own. The bios/MOBO on this system didn't have auto CPU fan speed control, so I used a zalman fan speed control dial that i purchased for $5.00 to slow the fan down. It had the same impact, although in this case the temps went as high as 51, although typically they ran in the mid-40s.

I found out about this trick by reading a review at a site called something like "silentpc". Their general observation about the stock intel fan is that it was noisy running at full throttle, but the good-news surprise was that when you slowed it down to <1900 RPMs it still cooled the CPU sufficiently and was virtually silent.

Marc

Processor: Pentium D930, rev B1 (3ghz, dual core, no hyper threading.)
CPU cooler: Stock Intel HSF.
Mobo: Asus P5P800-SE
Memory: 1GB of PC-3200 corsair memory.
Video: E-GEFORCE 6200, 128MB memory, using VGA out. Card also supports DVI & S-Video.
Case: Antec Overture II
SDEF Capture: Hauppuage PVR-250
HDEF Capture: Motorola dct-6200 via firewire
Output device: Samsung DLP 50" TV driven at 1280x720
Author:  tophee [ Sun Oct 08, 2006 12:20 pm ]
Post subject: 
If you like, my take on the whole silent media centre thing was to use water cooling: the Zalman Resisterator v1 with passive cooling for silent running. The only thing htat can be heard, is when it's recording and we're not watching anything and the house is quiet - then there is only the heart-beat like sound of the harddrive head moving. I've been looking into removing this noise by suspending the hard drive within a cdrom bay using elastic.
Author:  alien [ Mon Oct 09, 2006 1:05 am ]
Post subject: 
A couple of things to watch out for:
    Not all fanless PSUs work that great. I had to clamp several metal plates onto the heatsink to keep it from getting so hot it would burn to the touch
    Don't forget that the PSU fan is also used for case circulation. You will need excellent venting to keep everything else in the case from heating up. Look for a case with 8" fan holes as you may need to add them later as I did. It isn't that much of a disaster as I added a pot to slow them down to inaudible.
    Finally, the HD is probably going to end up the noisiest thing in your box. Read silentpcreview.com and pick a good one
If I were to do it again, I would probably go for lot's of big slow running fans rather than fanless. Slow fans are much quieter than even the quietest HD (IMHO). To get quieter, one would have to go watercooled with HD enclosures (or stick the PC in a closet somewhere).
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