Abit DigiDice: Therapy For Your PC, Continued
Abit relies on a heat-pipe-system to cool the CPU, which effectively transports the heat outside of the system. However, the small fan mounted on the back side of the case does not cause enough air circulation to cool the cooling fins when a 3.2 GHz P4 is at work. As a result, not enough heat is carried away, making the additional fan of the CPU run at full speed, which then again lets the CPU temperature reach 62°C.
Consequently, a high noise level of 60 db(A) within a distance of 0.5 meters is measurable at a high system load. Activating the silent modus under these circumstances does not make any sense, causing the temperature to rise even more (the CPU temperature rises to 64°C). Relief could only be found in the case of a P4 CPU with less power dissipation - meaning a lower clock speed. After all, more than 120 watts of power dissipation caused by the CPU, chipset, graphic card and the hard drive must be cooled.
An Abit barebone
CPU heat sink with fan and an additional heat-pipe