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Passive with Q6600?

iamTakeo

iamTakeo

iamTakeo

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Joined
2 May 2008
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Glasgow
I currently have an all-in-one watercooking kit, but I find it to be quite noisy, a constant drone that I can never wash out even when I put pillows under and around the setup.

I was thinking, I have an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro lying around. If I undervolted or maybe underclocked a little, with reasonable case flow, a couple of 120mm fans, is it possible to run the cpu at full load without going above 50-60c?

I'm too tired to try this right now, was wondering if anyone had any experience with a quiet, passive cooling solution that could play games without overheating.

G0 Q6600
 
Something like the Scythe Ninja Rev. B is near on silent on it's own anyway. Just couple one with a few 120mm fans around the case and you'll be fine. My brother runs his Q9450 & ATI 4870 with one 120mm case fan, one 120mm heatsink fan and his temps are perfect.
 
I'm not sure about totally passive running - even in its G0 form the Q6600 is quite a hot chip. As Craig321 says, though, a little bit of airflow goes a long way. The top-end air coolers are generally reckoned to be more effective than entry-level watercooling gear. Get a Scythe Ninja, Tuniq Tower or the Noctua cooler (can't remember model number), then combine it with a decent 120mm fan like the Noctua models and you should be able to slow the fan down until it's inaudible. You might be able to run passive if your case cooling is especially good, but you'd need a cooler of the standard of the above three. The Freezer 7 is a nice budget cooler but I can't see it being substantial enough to run a quad passively.
 
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Passive is possible on a Q6600 as long as you dont mind some highish temps and you are not going to be 24/7 loading the CPU..

I done a couple of tests to demonstrate this now it is not totally passive as I had to keep the fan on the graphics card going.. well didnt have to but couldnt be arsed to fiddle around :) but other than that there is no airflow in the case... system is clocked to 3.2, with a TRUE and speedstep enabled so 2.4ghz @ idle

So idle temps looked something like this:
Idle-1.jpg


now below is the CPU loaded under prime95 for 5mins.. now I could load for longer if you want to see what happens but if you are running silent for a file server / media machine then I dout you are going to see massive constant load on the CPU so this was really just to simulate worst case, may be worth running a blend test instead to simulate "high" ish load over a sustained period if your interested then I can do this..

load.jpg
 
going to try cooling my q6600 passive with just case fans on. got an antec 900 case so could be interesting, but tbh a silent 120mm fan wont really be heard over the case fans at low anyway.

waiting for a Thermalright ultra 120 extreme to arrive, and my 4850 on passive with a S1 attached.
 
Wait till autumn ....

.World's First Liquid Metal-Based CPU Cooler



danamics_2.jpg



NO FANS ..The LM10 is a liquid metal based CPU cooler that combines liquid metal with an electromagnetic pump ...

;)
 
well i am guessing the LM10 needs fans as you will still have to disapate the heat that the heatpipes are taking from the CPU... exactly the same way the a water setup needs fans on the rad to disapate the heat
 
I used to run fanless on the rad for while with my previous opteron rig which worked out OK ... but I did have the rear case fans to pull air through the case.

Also, I currently have 2 fans on my TRUE in my current rig and at 6v they are inaudible over my OCZ SilentXstream 600w PSU and whilst the PSU fan is not exactly silent it is not that loud either - I will see what clocks I can get with the fans on their lowest setting throughout. I know this aint passive but it will be quiet under load too.

Indeed, the psu fan is the loudest in my rig under idle/destop/browsing use. But it does get a wee bit loud when all 10 of my 120mm fans are at it under load !! :)

Edit: my idle/desktop temps at my 3.8GHz clock are around 45 with maybe the odd spike to 60 on one of the cores ...
 
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creed said:
yes but the liquid metal in that cooler has much better heat transfer properties than water.
Click to expand...

Well from the research I have done into the product its certainly true that liquid metals have a higher heat conductivity than water (normaly around 3 times the amount) however they have less heat capacity than water and therefore can not carry as much energy.. The main issue with similar products to this in the past has been that the liquid metal itself slowly raises in temperature overtime (just like water in a loop) but because it has much less heat capacity than water the effect is greater and therefore the performance of the product reduced...

Now i am no expert :) just writing what I have read and I would love for this product to be the dogs ******** but I for one am going to wait for the reviews before I get too excited
 
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