Passive cooling for 3570K

khaine1711 · 9 May 2013 at 21:58

Hello all,

Due to some changes in accommodation, now I have to put my computer (in sig) pretty much right next to where I sit. Main problem is I usually use the compy late at night - wearing open headphone (no isolation). The fan noise really bothers me, even when system is idle.

Are there any good passive cooling solutions on an i5 3570K - will the temperature be low enough even when I'm gaming? Would a low noise fan (scythe) or a huge passive heatsink be better?

I'd love to hear suggestions on passive heatsink/low noise fan/any possible solutions to this

ozzymundo · 9 May 2013 at 22:12

What's your case/OC? Passive is very hard to do, even the addition of one very slow fan can lower temps by over 40 degrees, I think I saw somewhere. You could try something along the lines of intake fan blowing right onto your heatsink, but you'd still have fans...

Another option would be passive water cooling or similar, depends on rad space etc but with enough I guess you could use very low rpm fans, but I'm no WCing expert

Puppetmaster · 9 May 2013 at 22:14

depending on your case, if you can fit a 120.3 radiator in with some fans running very low off a fan controller, it would be pretty quiet. Cost a fair bit to do but depends how badly you want it.

khaine1711 · 9 May 2013 at 22:27

Case is a budget NZXT source 210. I don't think WC is feasible for me. It seems passive cooling with gaming is not really possible. What about only when doing light tasks (music/hd movies/word, excel)?

I'm thinking about putting the HDD (I got a WD 1tb aside from the M4) in a NAS box and put it somewhere else. Still finding a way to minimize other noise sources.

Is there anyway to turn off the CPU fan, and turn it on when I need it - or automatically when temperature go past a certain point says 70 or 80 celcius?

Also there's the issue of the 7970 lightning. I've set a custom fan curve, even though it is quiet, I can still hear it. Is there a way to turn the fan off, or swapping VGA and integrated graphic like Optimus in Laptop?

Also in case I still need at least one case/cpu fan - what's the quietest fan at the moment (92/100mm or 120mm)?

ubersonic · 9 May 2013 at 22:31

Depending how much cash you fancy blowing, get can a used Zalman Reserator (should run you ~£30 delivered if not many other people are interested), A CPU block (any will do, not looking to break overclocking records), and a D5 pump (optional but much better performance/noise ratio than the one that's standard on the Reserator). Should run you up to £70 or £125 if you want the D5.

I used that set up with the D5 set at ~1.5 speed (on a scale of 1-5) to cool a Xeon E3 1245-V2 (Basically an i7 3770 non-K with a faster iGPU) clocked at 4GHz completely silently. I then expanded the set up by adding a second Reserator (piped in parallel with the first) and added an over clocked HD7950 to the loop with a full cover block. Temps remained fine even after gaming all day long when Max Payne 3 launched lol.

The drawback is that once the CPU makes 0 noise you will hear the GPU (hence why I added it to the loop), when that then makes 0 noise you will hear your PSU (so I bought a CM Silent Pro lol).

arad85 · 10 May 2013 at 10:23

Is it overclocked?

If not, the NoFan CR-95C should do you... if you can fit it in your case/on motherboard/over RAM. You will also need to make sure the top of the case is clear for remove any fans in the roof and make the case "open" as possible to allow convection. I run two PCs completely passively (well, OK, the server has air blowing gently over the disks to make sure they stay cool) and they are on 24/7. One is a i5-3470S (65W TDP) and that never gets above 50 deg. C. The other is a 95W TDP Athlon II - temps max at mid-high 70's...

Be very aware that passively cooling the CPU will simply move the noise problem elsewhere. Unless you have a silent graphics card and silent PSU of course....