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Lowest power cpu, that would run passively?

snowdog

snowdog

snowdog

Soldato
Joined
27 Oct 2005
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As per title, is there a cpu that will run noise-less with a passive massive cooler?
Doesn't need to be fast, about as fast as a 2ghz northwood or 2400+ amd XP or faster.

Want to build a file & download & routing server that can run 24/7 but make no noise, that can be cooled by in total 2 VERY low rpm fans that are practicly unhearable. Would prefer a cpu though that is on a socket that has mainboards with gigabit lan onboard, and erm, price is a 2nd requirement, as cheap as possible.
 
Hmm how fast are they? Comapared to a normall ''netburst'' p4 ?
I know nothing of Conroe-L celerons :confused:.
I still calculate the performance into netburst speeds :p.
Eg. a 3ghz c2d = 2 x a 6 ghz p4 :p.


Raikiri I renember ( I think) that you used to recommend me fans, do you know any VERY silent fans that are unhearable ? Eg. 400 rpm or something silly with 18dB or so?
 
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http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/cpu-cooler-fails,review-29650.html

check this article could be of use to you, its ahout coolers running when fan fails. t hey tried a couple but the only one that was succesfull was the c2d e2160 that managed to run everyting using the intel stock cooler with fan disconnected. inculding 3dmark 6 and pcmark05 cpu test were it was stressed it lost a bit of performance but kept going fine.

so i reckon a 2160 with a larger after market one would do fine

not sure what an e2160 is liek power consumption though
 
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Our E2140 @ 2Ghz runs passively 24/7 with a Scythe Ninja heatsink, the heatsink seems to be overkill though as its cold to the touch :)
 
Surely some kind of laptop chip would fit the bill here. Most are designed with low power usage fro battery purpose.
 
my e2140 is a very cool chip. at 2.8ghz it idles at 25 degrees with a thermalright 120 on it and an inaudible fan. At stock it would probably run fine without the fan
 
drak3 said:
I am also interested in noise-less systems.

How about the PSU? Any noise-less solutions there?
Click to expand...

Yup there's a few totally passive PSUs around, Silverstone make one. You can also get some very low noise fan cooled PSUs.

The noisiest thing in most well thought out systems is the HDD, with SSDs getting more mainstream we will start to see really quiet systems.

If you don't need an optical drive you can make a system with no moving parts at all.
 
I tried running my E2160 passive for a bit of a experiment, I am using a AC Freezer7 Pro and it was fine at stock speeds with the fan unplugged. I dropped the vcore to 1.1 and at 1.8GHz it loaded up to around 50c with prime.
 
You should be able to easily make a silent system with a C2D, back when the Pentium D's came out me and gf both had a D830 cooled by a Scythe and one quiet 120mm fan on low, passivley cooled GPU and a seagate drive, powered by a Yesico fanless PSU in a Antec P180 (complete with sound deadening kit, grommits etc).

They weighed a ton but were inaudible even at night in a quiet room, I turned mine off instead of on loads of times because i couldnt hear it :D

Nothing but praise for the Yesico, it never skipped a beat.
 
I ran my E2180 completely passively for about half an hour and the temps never rose above 30C in the BIOS. Note that was under a TRUE 120 which is a bit of a beast, but if you undervolt a bit it should be fine even with the stock heatsink.

EDIT: I reckon that new VIA chip will be even cooler, but not sure if you can buy it on the retail channel, might be OEM-only.
 
A Brisbane at low volts would output less heat than the Intel equiv, I've looked in to this and 10W or less passive is possible, a 1.5GHz sub 1v dual core Brisbane is plenty powerful enough and cool too.
 
Socket 939 kit is very cheap second hand. A 3000+ venice is about 30W at stock voltage, but should easily undervolt to the 10 - 20W range.

I run a venice 3000+ slightly overclocked at stock voltage with a passive scythe ninja and just a single 120mm nexus fan runing at 5v (sub 500rpm).

The key is a decent heatsink and making sure your case fan draws at least some air over it. If necessary use ducting.
 
Underclock and undervolt if you can.

Power (and thus heat) is directly proportional to the clock speed, and proportional to the voltage squared.
 
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