Passive cooling for AMD fx 8350

FluttershySucks · Jan 28, 2015

I'm looking into a new cooler, prioritizing silence, for the fx 8350, and I'm kind of liking the idea of passive cooling. My question is, will a passive cooling heatsink be able to keep up with the CPU, or should I suck it up and get something with ultra quiet fans?

photonboy · Jan 28, 2015

It depends on how high you plan to overclock, but a Noctua NH-U12S, NH-U14S or NH-D15 are options in order of ascending cooling capability (and cost). The latter two should be investigated for DDR3 memory overlap, case compatibility (cooler height) and in the NH-D15's case I think I heard it an overlap the top PCIe slot but I'm not certain.

Fan noise if setup properly should be near silent in basic usage and fairly quiet under load when gaming.
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/noctua-cpu-cooler-nhd15

(make sure to setup motherboard fan control software to optimize noise vs cooling)

damric · Jan 28, 2015

TPC-800 can do it.

http://www.coolermaster.com/cooling/cpu-air-cooler/tpc-800/

Cons29 · Jan 28, 2015

stock clock at passive cooling is usually not that good already.
if you oc, then it will be even hotter. if you already have the hardware, try it, don't touch the heatsink though.

synphul · Jan 28, 2015

Is the quest for passive cooling simply for noise reduction? If the case has room in it (ie not an htpc case), a pretty quiet route might be water cooling. Not a clc cooler, but an actual water cooling loop with a 360 rad and 3 sp120 fans. Running a larger than necessary radiator (120 would be bare minimum, 240 would handle decent overclocks), it would allow you to run the fans and half speed and keep it quite cool.

This vid shows how quiet it can be. Toward the end you can hear jay drop a pin, I think he said his fans are running around 55% on a 360mm for the cpu. The 480 for his gpu he even runs with the fans off when it's idling. Pretty close to passive cooling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aDID5S41_A

Motopsychojdn · Feb 1, 2015

Yup, over-radding is an excellent way to go, Depends how crazy you feel like getting

Moto

synphul · Feb 1, 2015

I've found a number of air coolers to be really quiet. They may as well be passive for the noise (or lack of) they generate. Putting my ear right next to either a 212 evo or dark rock pro 3 and can't hardly hear them at all.

The worst offender is usually the gpu cooler, especially if you're gaming on a single fan cooled card (like my hd 7850). Under load that thing starts heating up and those little squirrel cage style fans whine/whir with a nasty pitch. I'm sure more energy efficient (cooler running) gpu's with newer style coolers on them like the heatpipe and 2-3 fan setups on like the asus strix or gigabyte windforce types are quieter.

bmacsys · Feb 1, 2015

synphul :

If you tried to passively cool an 8350 with a Hyper 212 EVO you are looking for trouble. It is totally dependent on forced cool air passing through it.

synphul · Feb 2, 2015

Yea I didn't mean running either of those as passive (fanless) - I meant running them as intended, with their fans. Even with the fans running (active cooling) both of those are quiet coolers. There are likely other things in the area causing far more noise. Neither of them even when used normally produce a 'whooshing' air sound or hum or anything.

My point being a lot of newer cpu air coolers are so quiet, even with the fans left on them that other offenders are much more likely such as case exhaust or intake fans and/or gpu fans. If it's an htpc then it's probably is a fairly cramped case and going passive on everything I don't see being very doable due to lack of space. Unless it's a large case with huge heatsinks and even then it would be difficult to cool a hotter more powerful desktop cpu going totally fanless. If there's anything else in the room making any noise at all, doubtful you'd hear quiet fans.

Here's a perfect example. If you can easily hear a pin drop over this system with 12 fans on it, there's no reason to go fanless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aDID5S41_A

Deleted member 1732396 · Feb 3, 2015

to many people while expensive the be quite dark rock3 is usualy a go to choice for silence enthusiasts considering fans really dont improve it a whole lot

dark rock pro3

synphul · Feb 3, 2015

The fans on those are really quiet. Even the pro 3 with 2 fans on it. Not talking about just tucked away in the case, I tried getting my ear up next to it with the cover off and still couldn't hear it.

Deleted member 1732396 · Feb 4, 2015

the noctua nh-d14 is great if you keep the fans on but take those off and your really limiting your self
NH-D14

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