Passively Cooling Intel Xeon E3-1230

[Biscuit]

Hi All,

I just abused the reasonably good € to £ conversion rate and picked up an old 4C8T sandybridge based Xeon chip for less than £120 on Ebay, its going to form a new workstation for my office as my i7-4558U (dual core) based Macbook pro doesn't quite cut the mustard with the number of VMs and graphical software im using these days. Intel ARK suggests this is an 80W TDP chip.

It will eventually be going into my slightly modified Corsair 650D case along with the GA-Z77X-UD5H im currently using in my main desktop, so there will be plenty of other active airflow in the case as well as ventilation.

Quick look at the passive options on scan shows a few options that are designed for this kind of purpose.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/zalma...m3-am2plus-am2

and

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/nofan...l-and-amd-cpus

Or for the same kind of price I could pick up a pretty basic 120mm based water cooler that would fit on the back.

Perhaps I could get away with an even cheaper tower cooler and just not use a fan?

Thoughts anyone?

[MrRockliffe]

What about using a dual tower cooler such as the noctua NH-D15?

As long as you have good airflow, you should be able to run it without the fans. Could always undervolt the processor too.

[Biscuit]

What about using a dual tower cooler such as the noctua NH-D15?

As long as you have good airflow, you should be able to run it without the fans. Could always undervolt the processor too.

Bit expensive really. I'm hoping to spend under £40 but that seems to be almost double that!

I wont be undervolting the CPU, stability is of high importance so everything will be stock.

[MrRockliffe]

Does it have to be passive? I was thinking of selling my H80i since I'm going for more silence, and as I've overclocked my 4670K it isn't as quiet as a heat sink option.

I think as long as the rated cooling potential is higher than the processor rating, it would be fine. Obviously, the higher the better, as if you're running it for prolonged periods, you'll want something that runs coolish to avoid any damage due to heat.

[Biscuit]

Does it have to be passive? I was thinking of selling my H80i since I'm going for more silence, and as I've overclocked my 4670K it isn't as quiet as a heat sink option.

I think as long as the rated cooling potential is higher than the processor rating, it would be fine. Obviously, the higher the better, as if you're running it for prolonged periods, you'll want something that runs coolish to avoid any damage due to heat.

It will probably be switched off on an evening and not necessarily used every day.

A H80i would be tempting, although the fact you are looking for more silence does raise my eyebrow as to whether it would be what i'm looking for. Is it because the extra heat from your OC is causing the fans/pump to run at a higher speed that it did previously or are they actually quite noisey coolers in general? I know i havent been blown away with the noise levels of my H100.

[DDY]

That Xeon chip doesn't get that hot, I don't think you need anything more than a basic tower cooler like the CM Hyper Evo 212, in your Corsair 650D you should be able to run the fan at near silent speeds and still have good CPU load temps.

[MrRockliffe]

212 Evo is plenty for even a 4770. Though, the ETS-T40 series does perform better.

The issue with the H80i is pump noise over everything else. That and the fact my hard drive is silly loud too.

Then again, I've returned headphones because they squeak, so you could say I'm a real silence freak. I use WD40 far more often than I probably should. I have a door in my room for the cupboard that just stays open now because it squeaks... Bloody WD40 isn't doing anything!

EDIT: I can always do a sound recording if you'd like.

[satrow]

Yes, the Hyper Evo 212 should work well even with the fan set on low; if the air flow through the case matches up to blow through the fins of the EVO, you might even get away with using it passively.

TCASE is 69.1°C so it's not likely to throttle at lower than than 76°C.

[Biscuit]

That Xeon chip doesn't get that hot, I don't think you need anything more than a basic tower cooler like the CM Hyper Evo 212, in your Corsair 650D you should be able to run the fan at near silent speeds and still have good CPU load temps.

212 Evo is plenty for even a 4770. Though, the ETS-T40 series does perform better.

The issue with the H80i is pump noise over everything else. That and the fact my hard drive is silly loud too.

Then again, I've returned headphones because they squeak, so you could say I'm a real silence freak. I use WD40 far more often than I probably should. I have a door in my room for the cupboard that just stays open now because it squeaks... Bloody WD40 isn't doing anything!

EDIT: I can always do a sound recording if you'd like.

I think Ill pass on the H80i on second thought, its a bit overkill for my needs for sure.

The Evo 212 and ETS-T40 are both more like the price I was hoping to spend, but they are optimised for active cooling, I'm wondering if the options posted above might be better for passive?

Unfortunately there isnt much in the way of reviews on the web, almost tempted to give one of them a punt out of curiosity!

[DDY]

With the exception of that Nofan which I don't know anything about, I suspect the Evo 212, ETS-T40 and Zalman FX70 would perform similarly as passive CPU heatsinks in a conventional ATX case, where this point of similarity lies in terms of performance is hard to judge since it does depend heavily on the airflow within the case.

I can't think of any practical reasons for passively cooling a CPU in a traditional ATX case like the Corsair 650D, it will probably work with larger heatsinks such as the NH-D15 but marginally with the three heatsinks listed previously.

Again, what's the point? A basic £20 cooler will work well enough, spend a tenner more on a nice fan and you can have it cooled as quietly as if it were passive anyway.

[Biscuit]

Well I have plenty of fans kicking about and with the exception of the nofan, I suppose I could try with and without to see what works best.... So that narrows it down a bit.

[herulach]

Even something like a freezer 7 can be set to run at so quiet you can't hear it with the case closed and your ear against it levels. Unless you're going out of your way to deaden the HDDs and GPU any decent aftermarket cooler will perform the same.

As far as watercoolers for silence go, the advantage is really that you get more radiator space or cooler air over your radiator than an equivalently size HSF. With the 1x120s I'd guess they'd perform only marginally (if at all) better than a similarly priced air cooler. Although if you bump the rad up you can do better. My i7 will run passive with 2x360 radiators

[Biscuit]

The GPU will be a very basic passive one and there will be no mechanical drives permanently plugged in so the machine will be very quiet!

[DanceswithUnix]

I have a door in my room for the cupboard that just stays open now because it squeaks... Bloody WD40 isn't doing anything!

EDIT: I can always do a sound recording if you'd like.

WD40 is a water repellant, not a lubricant. Try a can of 3 in 1 oil. The clue is in the "Water Displacer 40" name

As for the cooling, I try and go for a big tower heatsink and a big slow moving fan. The Gigabyte motherboard fan profiles seem to favour full thrust and rattling the windows at the first hint of power usage, perhaps a manual fan controller on a big fan could keep the fan just gently turning which should be almost silent.

[MrRockliffe]

What WD40 is, is a gift from the gods.

By the way - on the can it says it's a lubricant, and I just had a look on the net and it says it is too

[herulach]

What WD40 is, is a gift from the gods.

By the way - on the can it says it's a lubricant, and I just had a look on the net and it says it is too

Get some gt85 if you want a decent penetrating lubricant. Far better than wd