Making a Pentium D945 silent

skyripper

skyripper

skyripper

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Just upgraded the chip in my media centre from a Core2Duo 1.8 to a Pentium D945 3.4 - thanks to Paragidm.

This has solved my bluray stuttering playback but had the side-effect of needing more cooling than the old chip. At 100% CPU, temperature goes to 77degrees, the cooler goes to 2900rpm. This is too noisy for a media centre.

I'm using a Arctic Freezer 7 Pro, and the case has silent Nexus 80mm fans as well.

What options do I have for sorting the noise on the cheap? I figure on the following;
  • Replace the cooler for a bigger one with a huge fan - but needs to be cheap, the chip upgrade was only a tenner
  • Stick a variable resistor (Zalman style) between on the AC7Pro limiting max rpm
  • Stick a silent fan on the back of the AC7Pro, ghetto style.
  • Underclock the chip, maybe undervolt it too
Pentium D945, Asus P5B motherboard, Ati 6450 passive gfx, AC Freezer 7 Pro, 4x 80mm Nexus fans all inside a Silverstone media case.
 
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Easiest option would be to undervolt the chip, less volts mean less heat means no noisy fans ramping up, give it a try before you throw money away :)
 
Why didn't you just overclock the C2D? It'd likely do 3-3.2 on stock or close to stock volts and wipe the floor with that Pentium D + run lots lots cooler.
 
Probably a toss up, last PIV duals weren't slouches, outclassed by C2D for sure but if it was one on the 1mb C2Ds, at 1.8Ghz it might be slower.. Fact that it cured his BRay stuttering seems to point to it being a wee bit more powerful than the c2d at stock speed, thinking it might have been an E2160, would'nt be completely surprised if it was an E4300 or E6300 though. Certainly at even 2.6Ghz or so it would eat the PIV alive, and the PIV really hasn't got that much headroom to clock, would prolly need 4.5Ghz+ to start catching up lol.
 
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The Pentium D 945 is Presler architecture. So from the last of the P4 range of CPUs. It clocks from 2.4Ghz (200x12) to 3.4Ghz (200x17) depending on load without overclocking. It has 4Mb of cache. However it does have a Max Thermal whatever of 95W.

The 1.8Ghz C2D E6300 is Conroe architecture. Would only top out at 2.2Ghz when clocked. It has 2Mb of cache. Its Max TDP is 65W.

The C2D I had was one of the original Core processors and was nowhere near as clockable as say the legendary Q6600. Besides this is meant to be a media centre, so reasonable performance and low noise was my priority rather than all out oomph.

So although the 945 is quicker in my tests (blu-ray playback and Handbrake encoding), its generating almost 50% more heat. Not saying its massively quicker, but for a tenner it was worth a punt, but generated a new one instead.

Maybe what I should have bought was something like Celeron Dual Core E3400 which is a very easy overclocker and only has a Max TDP of 65W meaning my current cooler will work fine with it.
 
SeraphX said:
Easiest option would be to undervolt the chip, less volts mean less heat means no noisy fans ramping up, give it a try before you throw money away :)
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Tried unclocking the FSB from 200 to both 166 and 133 with bugger all difference in max temperature. CPU-z showed the volts at 1.16, which is the lowest fixed volts the motherboard offers in the bios, so couldnt undervolt it either.

But yeah, it was worth trying.
 
Well this is only a bargain basement motherboard, and a media centre case. Mine gives BSOD's when pushed past 2.2ghz. Could even have been the 6yr old AS5 I was using as paste... who knows.
 
skyripper said:
The C2D I had was one of the original Core processors and was nowhere near as clockable as say the legendary Q6600.
Click to expand...

Sorry to disagree, but your board is the likely culprit. Every 65nm C2D i had did 3.1Ghz at least, from my first ES E6400 @3150MHz to my last retail E6600 which topped out at 3.8Ghz. Clocked at least 100 rigs with those cpus for systems i sold, mostly all did at least 3.3GHz on decent but low volts.
 
Maybe you're right the E6300 could be clocked up further with a different board, but the thread kinda went off topic. Basically I bought the wrong chip as I didnt research correctly, but it was only a tenner so I dont feel bad about it.

Whats my cheapest option to get quiet and reasonable speed without changing the motherboard?

I have everything in this windows install setup the way I like it including things like scheduled power-on/off for overnight iplayer downloads etc.
 
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