Passive cooling on Athlon II X4

Is it possible to passively cool(heatsink only, no fan) an Athlon II X4 600e/605e series by underclocking/undervolting or other means? any success?

Sure, it's possible. Is it sensible? Hell no.

For passive cooling to work the case has to have really good airflow, or else the heat just stays there and ruins the whole thing. Then you have the whole idea of 'wait a second, if i need to have fans on the outside where i can hear them anyway, why not have the same fan or a quieter one on the inside cooling the CPU?'.

May sound good, but it just doesn't add up mate.

some of the other options variables i've been looking @. Cool'n'Quiet 3 Technology is it effective, does it work, how often does it operate or stay kicked in, and if the Cool'n'Quiet does work is it more effective on the 45W models? also can't quite find any infomation on noise levels(dbA) of the stock amd fan/heatsinks. Are there aftermarket <20dbA fan/heatsink kits? really determined to build a quiet Athlon II X4 system

Hello nanook,

Welcome to OcUK Forums

Please read and understand the forum rules and enjoy your stay . . .

nanook said:

Is it possible to passively cool(heatsink only, no fan) an Athlon II X4 600e/605e series by underclocking/undervolting or other means? any success?

Click to expand...

I think that will be no problem whatsoever as these chips run really cool, I think you could almost use the stock heatsink fan *passive* if your not overclocking/overvolting . . .

Heres a quick test I did for you, Athlon II Triple-Core 425 2700MHz @ 3375MHz running Prime95 Small FFTs loaded for 15 mins . . . being *Passively* cooled by a Premium Heatsink (ThermoLab Baram)

24°C
49°C



That's with an overclocked and overvolted processor *and* a big phat meaty GPU sitting right under my passsive heatsink adding more heat . . . even though it's just a triple core compared to the quad core scenario you are talking about I think there won't be much difference in the temps . . particularly is you go for a low power chip . . .

I'm not so sure if the low power chips are worth their premium btw, the regular Athlon II's run pretty cool and can be undervolted a fair bit when running at stock speeds (1.425vCore down to 1.200vCore) thats if you choose a motherboard that allows vCore adjustment . . .

So yeah I say go for it, I've only got two fans on the Antec 300 case, one 120mm intake and the 140mm roof exhaust and that seems to be fine!

just want to make sure im understanding correctly. You ran an Athlon II x3 425 95W TDP with no fan on the cpu had no problems? is the vCore a motherboard feature that's software driven(like inside windows) or are its settings manipulated w/ the bios?

nanook said:

just want to make sure im understanding correctly

Click to expand...

Sure no problem but did you click the image link above? . . . it's all there dude (CPU-z, Coretemps, Prime load etc) you can even see how the chip is cooled!

nanook said:

You ran an Athlon II x3 425 95W TDP with no fan on the cpu had no problems?

Click to expand...

Yes I am running that now and have been for the past month or so, absolutely no problems at all . . . . well except I thought I wasted money on a king kong heatsink when testing it at stock speeds and the passive load temps never hit 30°C even . . .I tell ya I did everything I could to load the CPU right up and the temps hardly moved! . . . . I did check the heatsink and the whole socket area too and everything was running really cool! . . .once I started overclocking/over-volting and added in a descreet GPU I became glad of the extra cooling power of the 3rd party heatsink . .


95W TDP X3 Processor stands no chance of heating up under that SkyScraper!

nanook said:

is the vCore a motherboard feature that's software driven(like inside windows) or are its settings manipulated w/ the bios?

Click to expand...

Well in this regard it can be both. The vCore is the petrol of the processor and has been controlled by various different means, back in ye old days of overclocking we had to arrange jumpers on the motherboard, then it moved onto BIOS control which is still the most popular but more recently we are starting to see more and more O/S controlled overclocking tool such as AMD OverDrive™ that allow both a novice and expert overclocker to perform *most* of the overclocking live in the O/S . . . still not quite bug free yet but having used it for a month or so I am impressed, AMD have put a lot of effort into this software and I wouldn't mind using it all the time although I'm still a BIOS overclocker at heart!

Here is a screenshot I made while using AMD OverDrive™ to work out how much my chip could be undervolted. I don't know what the reason is but my personal experience of testing chips over the past few years leads me to believe there is a *MASSIVE* margin of safety in the vCore that get stamped on an individual chip (known as VID) so one of the things I do first once the system has been running fine @ stock for a few days I just gradually tune down the vCore, slowly but surely over the course of a few days, eventually you will get a reboot or blue screen so you nudge it up again slightly until the system runs without error for a week!

Anyway check out AMD OverDrive™ . . . you can see the vCore control over on the right hand side under the voltage section (called CPU VID)


AMD OverDrive™ - Just more proof how on-the-pulse of overclockers AMD really are!

all of the information you've given me is great, I do wonder which brand/model heatsink you're using though. gotta give a big thank you aswell

I have x4 620 i have ran with no fan on the heatsink @ 3.ghz no problems using a Mugen infinty, now clocked 3.8ghz have put a fan on but should be fine passive on stock volts

BigBruiserAl said:

I have x4 620 i have ran with no fan on the heatsink @ 3.ghz no problems using a Mugen infinty, now clocked 3.8ghz have put a fan on but should be fine passive on stock volts

Click to expand...

Hi,

I'm very interested in what you say - have you any fans in the case at all? I'm trying to run an Athlon II X4 620 passively with a Ninja 2 and keep getting temperatures of 70°C+ under load. Did you have to do anything special to manage to run it passively?

Thanks,

Spinner

Was messing last night at stock 2.6 i can under volt to 1.15v core and still testing did 2 hours of prime and hit 40c load with the fan so ill remove the fan and see what passive temps are. yes the case had one 120mm very close to the heatsink which was prob helping to cool it thinking about it.

There you guys some tests just for you

This 30 min prime 95 NO CPU fan at all just passive with a Mugen infinity and some MX3. There is 1 120mm case fan at the back at 1300rpm which very quite.
The cables are very messy so air is 0% and the gfx card is a 3850x2 which runs really hot so prob have better temps then me in a decent case



hope it helps

p.s this is not a stabilty test i have already done that this just to show passive cooling and i think most would agree the temps are no going to go much higher if any at all by leaving it longer

Also you will notice i have unlocked the L3 on my chip this is the reason you cannot use core temp to show temps same for AMD overdrive