Advice on cooling plz

[Herbtree]

Hello

I am thinking of building a itx based gaming machine and using the new low power 35watt processor most likely i5-6500T .

I was wondering if it would be possible to use a heatsink without a fan for cooling, just fans already running in the case?

If so can anyone recomend a heatsink which would fit a itx board

thanks

Herb

[Bonebreaker777]

Doesn't really depends on the board but rather the case (or rather how much space you will have in it). A nice ITX/low profile cooler: Arctic Freezer 11 LP. Should fit most ITX cases (unless your choosen 'pancake' of a tower can't even accommodate that).

[Herbtree]

Thanks for the advice

I was looking to purchase Thermaltake V1 mini , i think the max height of the cooler is 140 mm.I have been looking around at coolers and notice some interfere with the ram slots but i will check out the Arctic Freezer 11 LP.

[aidanjt]

You might find that your case fans by themselves will have to work noticeably harder to provide the heatsink with enough air pressure across the dissipation fins when the CPU is under load. With modern heatsinks (especially most of Noctua's) the fans attached don't have to do much work to keep the heatsink cool, consequently they can spin slow and not make much in the way of discernible noise above ambient. Check out the Noctua NH-D9L for example, twin tower heatsink design with a 92mm fan between them, and with a 35W CPU it wont need to do much at all even under sustained load, and may be able to run semi-passive at idle. Hell, even the NH-L9i could take it very easy with that power sipper. And on the budget end, there's not much wrong with the stock Intel LGA115x cooler, it stays very quiet under low power conditions.

That's my advice anyway, just use active cooling, and set all the fans to very slow, unless you're in an anechoic chamber, you'd be pressed to hear the difference between them running at low rpm, and the machine off.

[Herbtree]

You might find that your case fans by themselves will have to work noticeably harder to provide the heatsink with enough air pressure across the dissipation fins when the CPU is under load. With modern heatsinks (especially most of Noctua's) the fans attached don't have to do much work to keep the heatsink cool, consequently they can spin slow and not make much in the way of discernible noise above ambient. Check out the Noctua NH-D9L for example, twin tower heatsink design with a 92mm fan between them, and with a 35W CPU it wont need to do much at all even under sustained load, and may be able to run semi-passive at idle. Hell, even the NH-L9i could take it very easy with that power sipper. And on the budget end, there's not much wrong with the stock Intel LGA115x cooler, it stays very quiet under low power conditions.

That's my advice anyway, just use active cooling, and set all the fans to very slow, unless you're in an anechoic chamber, you'd be pressed to hear the difference between them running at low rpm, and the machine off.

Thanks for advising me on the Noctua coolers and the heat dissipation very helpful

So i have a selection of coolers that i have been looking at and will fit the ITX case, listed cheapest first

ARCTIC Freezer Xtreme Rev. 2

Be Quiet Shadow Rock Top Flow

Noctua NH-U9S

Anyone have any comments or experience of these coolers? Not sure which one performs better as i can't find a comparison of the 3

thanks

[Bonebreaker777]

that case is hardly a ITX case looks like a big ass case to me. If you would like to have passive cooling, a heatsink with fins spread out would be the best. And if you insist on a FAN still attached but on low RPM, be quiet cooler are fine or install a custom FAN. But for a 35W CPU I can't see the reason to buy a expensive cooler.

I have a Pentium G2120 (55W) cooled by the Intel BOX and FAN profile set to 'quiet' and even my be quiet PSU is louder, which is quite a thing.

I think the Intel BOX cooler with careful management should do just fine.

[satrow]

If you do go for a non-Intel cooler, check that the cooler will fit without fouling on your ITX 'board, especially if you intend to use a PCIE card or tall RAM. Noctua has available compatibility charts for their coolers, I'm not sure that all makers do, example for the Noctua NH-L12.

[watercooled]

It's hard to say for sure because of the lack of non-K Skylake reviews, but buying 'T' CPUs is often not worthwhile unless you're up against a hard power or thermal wall; going by tests of previous generations, the 'efficient' models aren't really more efficient at all in terms of performance per watt, they just have a lower power limit.

Even in a small ITX case, provided it has some airflow I can't see even the stock kicking up too much of a fuss.

[EndlessWaves]

I can't see any mention of a 'V1 Mini' on the thermaltake website. Do you mean the Versa I or the Core V1 perhaps?

140mm sounds like it's a pretty large case though, so I would say there's a good chance you might be able to find something rated to cool a 35W processor passively that comes in under that height and case fans will increase your margin of error tremendously over a completely fanless system.

The NoFan coolers seem to be the best regarded passive coolers but I think the smaller one is a hundred and fifty something millimetres high.

[Herbtree]

well the case can only take an itx motherboard , yes it is bigger then the smallest itx cases you can buy but still smaller then matx.

hmm very interesting about the intel box cooler, it has been long time since i built a computer so i wasn't sure how quiet they are, those 35w chips are not for sale in retail packaging yet but will definitely take the stock cooler into consideration

[Herbtree]

yes the noctua one is quite small in size and be quiet one is a c shape style looking at reviews i shoul be ok not sure about the arctic one

[Herbtree]

i was wondering what the performance difference is if they were clocked at the same mhz rather then model number but as you have mentioned there are no reviews out on 'T' CPUs, hopefully maybe some will appear in the next few weeks

[Herbtree]

yes you are correct , Core V1

after reading some reviews i might go with a cooler that has a quiet fan running at very low rpm's

[EndlessWaves]

well the case can only take an itx motherboard , yes it is bigger then the smallest itx cases you can buy but still smaller then matx.

Actually at 22.6 Litres it's a similar size to, or even slightly larger than, many small Micro ATX cases. If you're looking for a specific dimension or small faceplate then fair enough but in terms of overall volume something like Silverstone's SG10/SG09 take up the same space and fit cheaper Micro ATX motherboards and bigger CPU coolers.

The smallest Micro ATX case that take full height expansion slots that I'm aware of is the Sharkoon CA-M at 17.3L. If you can live with half height expansion cards then you can get much smaller than that. A typical non-gaming Mini-ITX is around a quarter of the size of the Core V1, about 5L.

It's a big case.

i was wondering what the performance difference is if they were clocked at the same mhz rather then model number but as you have mentioned there are no reviews out on 'T' CPUs, hopefully maybe some will appear in the next few weeks

It seems to be a fairly complicated subject and the mechanisms behind it not well documented by Intel. It's an interesting problem and I don't know if any hardware site has ever really dug around in it. As watercooled said the reviews that have been done seem to show very little difference but the ones I've seen have been focused on power efficiency so they were in an overclocking motherboards and a well cooled case. It may be that their ability to operate within a more limited cooling system is much better.

[watercooled]

i was wondering what the performance difference is if they were clocked at the same mhz rather then model number but as you have mentioned there are no reviews out on 'T' CPUs, hopefully maybe some will appear in the next few weeks

The model number can be a bit misleading when comparing standard to 'T' versions of Intel CPUs - the T versions are clocked lower and have a lower power limit. TBH it's probably easier just ignoring the similarity in the model numbers as there's no special relationship between say a 6500 and a 6500T.

If they were clocked the same and with no power limits then they would perform identically; clock speed and power limits are the differentiating factors.

Having read more than a couple of comparisons like this they don't even seem to binned significantly differently to the standard processors. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...t_3.html#sect0

Just to re-iterate what I said, unless you're up against some sort of power/thermal limit e.g. very compact case with limited airflow and/or very limited power from something like a PicoPSU then you'll probably be better off with the extra headroom of a standard power model.

[Herbtree]

cheers for the link, very good read. the thermaltake core v1 would probably be fine with 65watt processor and cooler with a very slow running quiet fan.

i am not sure about the Silverstone's SG10/SG09 as mentioned by endlesswaves they are very compact tight cases and i am trying avoid fan noise maybe 35w versions would be better in this scenario