Go Silent With Massive Fanless CPU Heatsinks
There is always an endless selection of accessories at Computex, it's sometimes difficult to weed through all the devices.
We did however stumble onto a selection of heatsinks that were passive but still impressive. Thermalright took the spotlight in terms of silent cooling this year--we think they did this last year too. The company showed off several big--literally--passive CPU heatsinks that we found were quite impressive.
Initially we felt that passive heatsinks were definitely not the right solution for those wanting to overclocking their CPUs. This makes sense because overclocking will demand something active if cooling by air, and liquid cooling for better results. Despite this, representatives from Thermalright claim that its heatsinks are so efficient, you can still overclock your processor. While we think this claim is true, the overclocking results you can get from a passive air cooling solution will be much more limited than what an active solution can deliver.
The heatsinks themselves are massive and quite heavy. If you plan to use these solutions in a tower case, make sure the heatsinks are secured tightly. At this point, the usual retention mechanism already applies a great deal of pressure to the motherboard, and so having the heatsinks essentially hanging on their side in a tower case, makes even for a more risky scenario.
Where do we see these working out best? In HTPCs that lay horizontally--and most do. This way, you'll get a silent cooling solution that won't put strain on your motherboard.
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the_one111 "Weighing only a light 260 Lbs these heatsinks make sure your computer is icy cool!"Reply -
old_newbie ReplyWhere do we see these working out best? In HTPCs that lay horizontally--and most do.
Not quite. Most HTPC cases are slim (at least the nice ones that look like an entertainment center component). These sinks look waaaay too tall to fit in an HTPC case. -
eyemaster Those are massive! They will need a system of pulleys to keep them in a tower case! :)Reply -
gabeherb345 won't that just make the case hot if you don't got alot of exit fans 0_0???????????????Reply -
stradric ZirbmonkeyThe only reason water cooling can achieve lower sustained temps than air is because the radiator to pump the heat outside the case has more exchanging area than the average air solution.Reply
And here I was thinking it had to do with the specific heat of water being 4.19 joules / g where as the specific heat of air (according to wolframalpha) is .717 joules / g. That means water can absorb almost 6 times the energy that air can. Surface area be damned! -
cablechewer My server and my main desktop are both using passive coolers. The case fans draw out enough air to keep the case cool and I have a few less moving parts that can fail as they age. I am quite happy with them. In both instance I selected processors that are 65W or less on the TDP (the passive coolers claimed they could handle 89W, but I stayed lower just to be safe).Reply
Since my main desktop also has a 4870 in it the passive CPU cooler is more of a curiosity than anything else. Let me know when I can cool the 4870 passively and I will be really interested :D