Passively cooled CPU

[scottluebke2003]

My Athlon XP 1800 @333FSB is being cooled by a Speeze Falconrock and always idles at 30C and loads at 34C. That is pretty low. I am thinking about running a test with the fan unplugged and seeing how fast the temps rise and where they stop. It shouldn't be a problem as long as I keep an eye on the temps while I am doing this experiment.
Has anyone ever tried something like this before? I've got a chipset that runs in the 40's with a Vantec Iceberg kit, and the fan isn't even plugged in, the fan doesn't lower the temps even 1 degree. Maybe a similar outcome for this cpu??? What do you think?

[megaspazz]

it's your cpu so go for it!

i just replaced my 1800+ Tbred A with
an 1800+ mobile after some oc action
gone bad. i was watching temps all the
time and still the cpu got fried a bit.
the original still works but yakks under
load and eventually completes commands
but way longer than normal. *grrrrr*
(that original chip was very cool like yours,
maybe 39 deg C under load at hottest,
low 30's at idle. wah)

and i thought EasyTune4 (EasyRoast?)
was supposed to default back to a stable setup if things got a bit sketchy... :mad:

btw: can you measure spl to see the
diff in audio levels, w/ fan and w/o ?

[G Ray88]

Might try a different cooling system to see how it cools, it will only take a few seconds and the CPU is toast. Good Luck:eek:

[scottluebke2003]

I've also got BIOS temp thresholds set at around...um 70C or so. Shouldn't be a problem. I will just sit there with the 3 pin header in my hand ready to plug it in. I'll let ya know what happens when I do try it.

[Johnny Fist]

I got my 1700+ up to 200 degrees F with just a heatsink (no fan) in a matter of seconds.

[RamonGTP]

I ran a duron 700 OCed to 933 with the fan powered off, it did eventually get hot, but it was a very gradual increase.

[megaspazz]

Originally posted by Johnny Fist
I got my 1700+ up to 200 degrees F with just a heatsink (no fan) in a matter of seconds.

well, was it dead after that?

[Johnny Fist]

Nope, its still running. It just kept rebooting the entire time. I didn't do it on purpose. I tried using a Speeze heatsink and fan. The fan was a dud.

[scottluebke2003]

After installing a friend's new HSF the temp was 90-100C! It kept rebooting itself but no damage. I believe it has a faulty base on the cooler.

[widget2003]

hi i once had a duron 800 not overclocked (loved that thing) and the fan died on me and i didn't relise for 2 days and it was running pretty good of course temps were hotter but nothing that would damage the CPU by any means. also are you just doing this for fun or are you after a silent cpu if you are just looking for silence maybe put a fan that it running very slowly like 2000 rpms that should give you pretty much silent operation and also give you acceptable temps. :t

[scottluebke2003]

I tested the cpu w/o the fan. The temps rose to around 40-45C at idle, climbing very slowly. Then I ran Sandra burn-in and it rose to 50-55C after 5 minutes or so. All the time the temps were climbing very slowly. But at the mid-50's I figured that I needed the fan. So I slapped a resistor on it and am running it at 1700 rpm. My comp is very quiet, and at this point my Enermax PSU makes the most noise, which lets you know how quiet the comp is running.

Here's an interesting point: if you have a comp that is strictly for the internet and music and so on, then you can likely install a good copper heatsink and run it without a fan. Like the TT Volcano 12 base, remove fan, and you should be fine.

[Johnny Fist]

You couldn't be more wrong.

[widget2003]

yes i agree, these days you cannot just have a heatsink, your cpu will randomly crash on you and you will have an extremely short life span on the CPU. in winter it wouldn't be such a bad idea if you have good airflow through the case but in summer you would absolutely have to put a fan on the heatsink if not the temps will very quickly reach like 70 - 80C if not more and just keep slowly rising until repeated crashes occur if it didn't crash at 70C already. The only way you could passively cool a CPU if it was a pentium under a Ghz with an awesome 3rd party heatsink meant for the new Intel beasts over 3Ghz which im not even sure you can do lol.

[alivin]

I just changed out a psu from a pos gateway 900 celery and that had a huge crude aluminum passive hs, good job because the psu was only 90 watts.

[causticVapor]

The two quotes above Alivin's couldn't be more wrong in themselves.

It is perfectly possible to cool a processor passively these days. Yes, a high-speed processor. Yes, a high heat-output processor.

It only requires quite a massive piece of metal and some thermal engineering to spread the heat from the processor die to the body of the heatsink as rapidly as possible. The Heatlane Zen is an example of this.

It is possible to run a CPU cooled passively, but don't expect a POS aluminum stock cooler to be able to run even a .13-micron chip at speeds much above 1.2GHz.

The good thing about high-speed chips (2GHz+ AMD, 2.4GHz+ Intel) is that they can be downclocked and/or undervolted to reduce their heat production.

Most tbreds can run at ~1.5GHz with 1.3v or so and not require active cooling. Sure, they'll run on the higher end of the thermal envelope, but won't crash. Note that a rather good cooler needs to be used for this to work.

Again, do not try using pure aluminum coolers for this as they will heat up way too quickly. And don't try even nominal voltages unless you have good case airflow moving over the sink.

If you just remove the fan at stock speed to see what happens, don't expect any miracles. Most IST-based sensors can't even read that quickly and the system will crash before you know it.

It takes finesse, not ham-handedness. Just think about how you handle a hot potato - either buffer your hands more with insulation (bigger heatsink) or cool down the potato (lower the voltage/speed). Either way, you'll eventually reach a speed/voltage where your CPU can run at 100% load without crashing. The performance level may be underwhelming, though.

But nobody ever said you could have everything.

[scottluebke2003]

Some miscunderstanding I think.
Passively cooling a high speed processor is unlikely. However, my cpu maxed out at 34C, so I figured it could be passivley cooling, and I was right. It just depends on your temps.
If you have a cool room temperatue and your case is cooled well, then you might not need to have a fan on the cpu. If you game, then you will need active cooling. But my Grandma and Mom could get by fine without active cooling. It's very possible.

[girls_love]

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[bushmaster]

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