Passive Cooling

[Shakey]

I'm looking to do passive cooling the Processor and Video card I plan on getting soon

I'm getting a Intel E6600 and I'm not Overclocking
and a Leadtek GeForce 8800 GTS
anyone have any ideas how to keep these things cool?

Also if anyone has any ideas for good SLI certified passively cooled powersupplies I'd really appreciate you pointing me in the right direction.

 

[stefx]

go to silentpcreview.com (the forums), lots of people there go passive

 

[Il_palazzo]

I'm looking to do passive cooling the Processor and Video card I plan on getting soon

I'm getting a Intel E6600 and I'm not Overclocking
and a Leadtek GeForce 8800 GTS
anyone have any ideas how to keep these things cool?

Also if anyone has any ideas for good SLI certified passively cooled powersupplies I'd really appreciate you pointing me in the right direction.

You know what a air cooled passive setup is not going to happen with that computer, the processor is fine but the videocard produces way to much heat.

Your only chance to get mostly fanless cooling would be through watter cooling. Zalman makes a very good passive watter cooling setup, but until there is a new revision you will likely need to modify or make a new retention mechanism for the GPU water block.

Your best bet for a SLI ready power supply is the Seasonic 500w. (The 600w uses a higher speed cooling fan.)

And even SPCR does NOT recommend going 100% passive due to motherboards hard drives and memory requires some cooling, but very quite low speed fans can be used. (The Zalman case provides cooling for hot spots on the motherboard.)

 

[jaguarskx]

To passively cool the E6600 I would use the the Scythe Infinity:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835185027

Just leave the fan off.

As for the 8800GTS, there's probably nothing available for it yet. I would suggest the Zalman VF900 since it is a quiet fan, but it is not compatible with the 8800GTS to the best of my knowledge.

As for the PSU I recommend the Seasonic S12 500. I got it in my system and it is very quiet; efficient too. The S12 430 is the quietest of the series, while the S12 600 is the loudest of the series. The S12 600 is still a very quiet PSU in it's own right expecially compared to other 600w PSUs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817151024

I'm not too sure about the how quiet the newer Seasonic M12 PSUs are, but considering that they use two fans instead of one they should be a little louder than the S12 series.

If you plan to have as passively cooled rig (except the PSU) with two 8800GTS, then forget it. There will be a little too much heat to move out of the case without some noisy fans.

Speaking of fans, I recommend Nexus Real Silent 120mm fans:

http://www.svc.com/d12sl-12-bw.html

 

[Shakey]

I wasn't thinking of doing passive with 2 8800's, but as quite as possible for a little extra expense as possible. Since I have to buy a Heat sink for the CPU I might as well get a good passive one, since I need a new power supply I might as well do the same, and heck, I'm willing to drop a few bucks on a heat sink for the video card if that makes my compuer silent (except for the hard disks). And I was thinking of actually going with a RAM Disk, and using my old ATA100, 160 Gig for storage and stuff, but Vista is an 11 gig install, and the only reasonably priced RAM drive only hold 4 gigs. Thanks for the input guys, if anyone has any other idea's I'd appreciate it.

 

[HotFoot]

You know what'd be awesome? A PSU that had built-in water cooling. It could come with a switchable fan for start-ups, so you can get your water pump going if it's powered by the PSU, and then once you're water's on the move, you turn the fan off. Throw that in a case that allows for good natural convection and get a couple giant passive rads, and you're on your way to a totally fanless case. Of course, by the time you do all that, the $1200 Zalman case starts looking attractive. I was looking at it a couple weeks ago and wishing that it came in a horizontal format. I don't want a tower for my HTPC.

I'd also like to kick in my own experience with passive CPU cooling. The TT Sonic Tower has done well by my PD820, so your CPU won't be much of a challenge for it. However, you do need a case with good airflow to keep that cooler working at it's best. I have the TT Tsunami Dream, but most new cases are pretty good for airflow. If you want to get into overclocking, you can always add a fan later.