Quiet & cool Dual Xeons (604); how?

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30 Oct 2007
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5
Hi all,

This is my first post in here; sorry if it is the wrong forum. I am not overclocking, but this is certainly about cooling.

I bought a Supermicro X6DAE-G2 running two Xeons 3.60 MHz (socket mPGA604) a year ago. Originally I could only find one of the Supermicro cases to work with it, so I bought a SC743i-645. The processors had passive heatsinks cooled down by six fast and noisy 80 mm case fans; I think you can imagine the racket they made (and this is my home machine, but the case is server grade).

When I got fed up with the roar I decided to get a quieter case and have just bought a Cooler Master COSMOS 1000 (with five 120 mm case fans). The MB and CPUs fitted fine and was remarkably quieter, but with the passive heatsinks the CPUs overheated very rapidly (it took only 10 minutes from boot to automatic shutdown due to overheat safety warning at 80 C). So I put the original Intel active heatsinks on the CPUs, which cool them down nicely (39-45 C), but nullify ALL of the sound gains due to the new case (and on top of that the noise they make is a whine rather than a low roar, which is more annoying still).

I am at a loss; is there a quiet way of cooling down mPGA604 Xeons? Does anyone know of a quiet active heatsink for them? I am even prepared to try water cooling as long as it is quiet (what would be the point of changing two noisy fans inside the case for two noisy ones outside the case?) and will work for two 800-MHz-FSB processors. Help, please...
 
Mine are actually 400 MHz Xeons running at 800 MHz (1.6 GHz stock OC'd to 3.2 GHz)

I'm quite happy with my setup. If I had to do it again I'd get fans that were a little more powerful. The ones I have are dead silent but the CPUs can get a little warm on hot days, seeing as mine are in a perpetual state of 100% load.

I'm interested in the Thermalright SI-9XV. I quite like heatpipe designs so that might be just the ticket. I don't think it was available when I was building mine. It's certainly worth consideration.

As for where to get them I have no idea as far as UK suppliers are concerned. Even if I did know of some I couldn't tell you anyway since they'd be classed as a competitor.
 
Mine are actually 400 MHz Xeons running at 800 MHz (1.6 GHz stock OC'd to 3.2 GHz)

I'm quite happy with my setup. If I had to do it again I'd get fans that were a little more powerful. The ones I have are dead silent but the CPUs can get a little warm on hot days, seeing as mine are in a perpetual state of 100% load.

I'm interested in the Thermalright SI-9XV. I quite like heatpipe designs so that might be just the ticket. I don't think it was available when I was building mine. It's certainly worth consideration.

Ummm... Thermalright actually list my motherboard in the list of compatible ones...

As for where to get them I have no idea as far as UK suppliers are concerned. Even if I did know of some I couldn't tell you anyway since they'd be classed as a competitor.

They would only be competition if Overclockers actually carried them.

Thanks anyway!
 
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That's not typically how the moderation team acts. Any site that sells PC parts is classed as a possible competitor, even if they're not competing on that particular item.
 
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