Can you passive cool an AMD 5050e?

[rob4001]

Just wondering if it is possible to cool a 5050e passively or does it run too hot for that. If you can what cooler can you use?

Thanks

[Flewis]

i would think in theory it could be passively cooled, might need a big tower heatsink like a scythe ninja or a thermalright one. Depends on your case airflow too, if its good it will be much easier.

[Infinite]

I believe any fairly large heatsink with a few heat pipe will do the trick.

So just look around for any heatsinks that dont come with fans.

[TAKTAK]

Anything can be passively cooled...

Just all depends on circumstances:

you may get a poor sample which runs very hot and only just within specification, or you may get a very good sample.
Then there is the environment, hot climate, cold climate...
Airflow, if you don't have decent airflow then passive is a no no (most of the time)
Big chunky cooler with heatpipes (in most cases), something to remove the heat from the CPU quickly and also dissipate it effectively..

Coolers, some are designed to be used passively (HR-01)
And some are designed to be run with a fan, but can be run passively (TRU120e)

A ninja should be able to tame that chip though, and is one of the cheaper solutions available.

Or you can do the easy option and go for a tower cooler with a decent quiet fan (noctua P12) and undervolt the fan to get it spinning slower and thus no noise.
Plus why do you want passive?
It is more than likely that the other components will be as/even louder... especially GFXcards..

as an example, my rig << is nice and quiet and also nice and cool while running at full load 24-7 (Folding for HEXUS, you should too )

[rob4001]

Thanks for the replies I'm using it as HTPC in a MicroATX tower. Graphics card is on the motherboard so if I passively cool it it'll nearly silent except for PSU and Hard drive. If not passive the a very very quiet cooler will do.

[McPhee]

I'm running an E5200 passively under a Silverstone NT06-E. Works fine, idle temps between 45'C and 50'C, load moving up towards the 55'C/60'C mark. They're higher than i would like but just about acceptable. What you need to be aware of though is that heat can make the PSU fan ramp up, creating more noise. It might be quieter to have a "silent" fan installed on a good CPU heatsink instead.

Also, what case and case fans are you using?

[scaryjim]

If you're using a mATX case you may have issues with space and airflow within the case. Are you using this purely as an HTPC? If so you may still get acceptable performance by underclocking and undervolting the CPU (if your motherboard allows it) which will help it run cooler, and make passive colling easier...

[DanceswithUnix]

Careful of the motherboard temperatures too, some seem to depend on the CPU fan to cool the northbridge & power regulators.

[staffsMike]

A lot of people on forums like SPCR are passive cooling amd's and intels with things like ninjas and negligable case air flow. One of the guys is on here occasionally, oxygen2000 or something like that. His case is full of sound proofing as well

[CX23882-19]

I'm running with an Athlon BE-2350 (2.1GHz) with a Scythe Ninja and have the case exhaust fan (Arctic Cooling PWM Fan) controlled by the CPU fan connector. There is no fan on the Ninja itself, but I don't know whether you would call it "passive" due to the close proximity of the exhaust fan.

The exhaust fan itself idles at around 500RPM, maintaining a steady 35°C CPU core temperature. Brief bursts of 100% CPU usage don't cause it to ramp up the speed at all and at 500RPM it can be considered "silent" in my system, due to noise from hard disks and PSUs being roughly equal. Under continued heavy CPU load it will ramp up to 1000RPM-ish (target temperature of 45°C) and under very rare circumstances up to the maxmum 1500RPM. If I were willing to tolerate higher CPU temperatures I could set the target temperature higher, but I'm happy as it is.

The main issue I see with this kind of arrangement is cooling of other components on the motherboard. Things such as the chipset and power circuitary are arranged so that they receive airflow across them from traditional top-down coolers, and you don't get this with a tower heatsink such as the Ninja, even with a fan attached directly to it.

[pharm]

Don't know about passively cooling a 5050e, but I'll note in passing that I've undervolted mine (just to cut power consumption) and it's been perfectly stable.