Passive cooling?

[nibbler]

In a case with a couple of 120mm fans, what would be capable of passively cooling a 45W athlon II triple core?

[matty-hodgson]

The Scythe Ninja would be perfect for this, that was capable of cooling a 95w Q6600 at stock with only 2 case fans until i upgraded case and such..

[crazyfool]

yh I agree the ninja woud do it well
Also the coolermaster geminii I think its called can apparently cool a q6600 at stock with only 1 case fan

[Queelis]

The Scythe Ninja would be perfect for this, that was capable of cooling a 95w Q6600 at stock with only 2 case fans until i upgraded case and such..

+1 for the Ninja (Ninja 2 Rev. B, I assume), it's designed partly to be passive (45W it will do easily).

[Jay]

.....

[nibbler]

That's great jay, I reckon I'll pick up one of them if I need to passive cool then, it's only about £25 on scan. The reason I asked this is because my dad is moving his study upstairs and I told him that he cannot continue on his single core laptop. He says he wants an iMac like my mum has - I say I'll build something cheaper, faster and just as quiet. Reckon a fractal R2 Define case with the noise dampening has the airflow for this kind of thing? I guess with a triple core 45W processor it's bound to be fine. Any reccommendations for another energy efficient processor or just something for under £80 that can be passively cooled?

[scaryjim]

If the stock heatsinks for the 45w Athlon IIs are anything like the one for the Sempron 140 (and I can't see why they wouldn't be) they are very low profile and almost silent anyway. You can also undervolt the CPUs a lot to reduce heat, which drops fan speed and noise. My HTPC has a Sempron 140 with stock cooler in an Antec Aria (basically the same as the NSK1300), which means the only case fan is the 120mm PSU fan, and it's practically inaudible... and the CPU idles at about 31 degrees with a fan start temp of 30. If you're going for a 45W Athlon and 2 120mm case fans I doubt you'll need anything near the size of the TRUE...

[GheeTsar]

Reckon a fractal R2 Define case with the noise dampening has the airflow for this kind of thing?

Not unless you add in extra fans.

Without extra fans:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/201...-case-review/3

With extra fans:
http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2010/01...-r2-follow-up/

[scaryjim]

If we're talking cases, just spotted a new Antec on ebuyer:

Antec 200T

Top 140mm tricool, Rear 120mm tricool, space for 2 front 120mm tricools. Also features bottom-fitted PSU - looks a lovely budget Antec! I reckon you could get away with pretty much any heatsink for a 45w Athlon II if you have a 140mm fan directly above it - ideal thermals, I'd've thought. Go for one or two very quiet front 120s instead of the rear 120 tricool - should be excellent for a passively cooled CPU...

[nibbler]

I want something that looks a little more subtle unfortunately. For an £800 budget I specced a 22" monitor, a 40gb intel v series SSD, windows 7 and 4gb of ddr3. Obviously for my dad, the GPU is no issue at all, in fact it might be better to go with stock graphics? How would the antec P180 mini be for noise do we think? With the 200mm exhaust only and then the psu?

This was my list;

Case

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Fract...-inc-Front-I-O

£79.99

CPU

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-A...che-45W-Retail

£76.10

Motherboard

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/MSI-7...dio-GB-LAN-ATX

£49.30

Memory

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-%...-9-9-9-24-150V

£102.34

PSU

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/450W-...-year-Warranty

£58.10

SSD

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/40GB-...-70MB-s-Retail

£93.87

HDD

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/500-G...MB-Cache-89-ms

£38.25



GPU

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...-DL-DVI-I-HDMI

£71.17

Monitor

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/22-Ac...050-25001-VESA

£117.25

Windows 7

http://www.microsoft.com/student/dis...k/default.aspx

£69.99

£756.36

[scaryjim]

... in fact it might be better to go with stock graphics?

If he doesn't play games a 785G based motherboard would be a reasonable option - or take the graphics down to a 5450 which would be passive == quieter PC still! Although the integrated graphics option would be more energy efficient - I believe MSIs motherboards have a particularly good power management system - just can't remember who it was on here I was comparing power draw readings to recently, but they had a much more efficient PC partly down to the good voltage regulation of their MSI board...

p.s. As far as case go, this one looks like an interesting design: Sunbeam 3D Storm - it has fan mounts inside the case to manage airflow, and has a nice subtle design - very simple lines.

[nibbler]

He plays no games at all, so yeah probably go with a 785G board, maybe an ASUS one? I'm pretty jealous that he gets an SSD with what I've chosen but hey

[Kumagoro]

you could always duct the Heat sink to the case fan with something like this.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Therm...n-duct-only%29

[nibbler]

To be honest, it's a 45W athlon, it's not going not overheat especially if I undervolt it

[Blaineoliver]

1080p aria monitor 22" will do the job better, either the arianet or samsung ones are good.

[nibbler]

Free delivery wins it for me to be honest. What do Aria charge for delivery on a £100 item??