Passive cooling. No fans, no motors, no nothing.

So, this is a little crazy.
I'm kind of an audio nut, and i was giving those fanless mini-itx systems a good hard look, because they're absolutely silent, and i really dig that. But i do a fair amount of photo editing, and like to play the *occasional* game, so i wanted something with a little more balls than a 1GHz CPU and 512MiB memory. And, i'm still in college, so the cost of one of those systems would have been prohibitively expensive. I've been scheming for a while now about how best to go about building a completely silent, solid state desktop, and after over two years of thinking (obsessing?) i decided that i would like to put the hardware together without a case, so that it's on permanent display. To be fair, this takes up considerably more desk-space than a tower tucked under the desk but, what the hell. I also couldn't think of a good way to take advantage of convection inside of a case.

Enter the fanless wonder (....)
True to form, this sucker is *completely* silent. No noise. No buzz, no clicking, no nothing. Just empty silence. The only way i can tell if it's on or not is by looking at the power LED on the motherboard.
Aesthetically speaking, the cables are a little messier than i had hoped for, but i intend to address that as soon as i get done with my midsem exams . The power for the SSD needs to come from a 5v rail on the motherboard instead of all the way from the power supply, which will get one of the cables from the PSU out of the way. I'm not entirely sure what else i can do to improve presentation, but i was considering lengthening the PSU power cables so that i can put the PSU on the floor to both save space and clean things up a bit.
You'll notice two LEDs soldered to the right-front corner of the motherboard: the red one on the left is just your everyday HDD access indicator. The clear LED just to its right (which shines brilliantly blue when lit) was installed in favor of an on-board buzzer. So no beeping; the system will just flash at me if i get an IM or an e-mail or whatever.

Here's what i've got under the ...er hood.
MOBO: Asus P5L-VM 1394 ($75)
--> Cooled by a Zalman ZM-NBF 47 ($10) on the northbridge and a Zalman ZM-32K ($6) on the southbridge.
CPU: intel Celeronrolleyes 420 Conroe-L running stock at 1.6GHz ($42)
--> Cooled by a Thermaltake CL-P0268 with the fan and corresponding mounting bracket removed. ($37)
RAM: 2GiB of DDR2 running stock at 667MHz ($43)
PSU: FSP Group Zen 400W, which was not cheap ($150)
SDD: Transcend 8GiB IDE Flash Module ($153)
ODD: Lite-On 16X DVD+/- and CD burner ($25)
Mounting hardware: assorted nuts, lock-washers, bolts, thread protectors, and rubber feet ($10)
==>Total system cost, not including shipping: $551

When i get back from spring break i'll be able to pop in a passively cooled Nvidia 7600GT that i have at home, so the games should be much smoother than what the integrated 945G northbridge gives me now.

Performance.
So this thing isn't a multi-core juggernaut of badassery, i think we can all agree on that. But i don't need it to be: i've got no reason for anything speedier. But it's way faster than my old system, an ancient AMD Sempy whitebox. Right now my SDD's a little cramped, but as soon as i move out of college i will set things up so that all of my home directory is served over the network, making 8GiB more than enough for OS and applications. (Though the AMD whitebox may be pressed into service shortly as an interim server while i'm still in my last semester at school so i can have a little room to breathe.)
Temperatures for my CPU are stable around 59C, and the temperature on the board is reported to be 39C or 25C, depending on how you interpret the sensor readings. Not freezing cold, but not dangerously hot, either. My northbridge is maybe a degree or two hotter than the CPU, but the southbridge stays considerably cooler. Maybe there's a little room for overclockage? I had been running at 2.0GHz with stock cooling while waiting on my heatsinks, so perhaps i'll bump it up some day and keep a close eye on the temps.


Nothing magic here, i just thought i'd share my latest project with you folks. And as always, some photos. wide | close


_nick

Impressive.

Personally, I'd go for the traditional low-speed fan passive tower. If I wanted to go passive.

I need fan noise to tell me my computer's on.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/memory/506/

Consider that for more hard drive space.

I didn't read your entire thread, sorry, I'm at school right now, but I was thinking...

Why not just get a nice 45nm C2D, under volt it a bit, throw on a big cooler like a Scythe Ninja, and add a single 120mm fan (a yate loon perhaps) running at 4v.

Then, get a passive GPU, and strap on a 5v 80mm fan (a scythe silent fan perhaps)...

That's below 18dba, the normal threshold for a soundproof recording room.

Leman: thanks for the link. I thought about buying one of those, but in the end went for the all-in-one package for the looks, although i admit i could have saved money on something like what you're suggesting. Plus, with the CF-IDE adapter you can always upgrade down the road when memory gets much much cheaper.

Arcygenical: true, and i know that had i gone for an *almost silent* machine then i would have saved a few bucks, but i think part of the fun of this for me was just to see if i could build a reasonably powerful machine cooled only by convection.

you could always get a couple 500rpm Scythe Slipstreams, the things are virtually silent.. you have to stick your ear right up to them to hear them and you could reduce your temps that way and still be silent... just moving a little more air around will greatly increase chances for an overclock

props for the gentoo mug

That's awesome! I'd love to have a COMPLETELY silent computer as well, maybe I'll do it one day when SSDs become cheap and have larger capacities. It's pretty nice as it is, but some time down the line a Scythe Ninja would do you damn well with those temps, plus if you could put it all into a test bench/rack whatever and place it vertically, the hot air form the processor etc. would just easily rise up.

Also, is that PSU fanless as well?

Wow, I'm impressed by your stubbornness... I would be way to tempted to throw some kind of moving part in there, especially a HD. Although I have always dreamed about building an old-fashioned no case, no nothin, just components and psu zip-tied-to-a-block-of-wood-and-mounted-on-the-wall-behind-my-desk pc... someday... someday... maybe this summer.

-HD

skadebo said:

Also, is that PSU fanless as well?

Click to expand...

The FSP Zen is perhaps the only good fanless PSU on the market. Unfortunately, quite expensive.

HomelessDepot: Hah, yeah it was *very* tempting to use even just one fan -- especially in that PSU, because as Leman pointed out, it would have been a lot cheaper had i broken down and gotten even a really really quiet actively cooled PSU. (And i could have saved money with that SSD, too.) But it's way sweeter, having a totally silent machine . Besides, the PSU only gets a few degrees above room temperature, the way i have it propped up on those two bent bolts (not that i'm running a power-hungry system, here.) I was going to go for the cheaper 300W FSP Zen, but on Newegg.com at least, it seemed to have much poorer reviews than the 400W, so i guess the 300W version just isn't built to last like it should. I'd rather spend a few extra dollars up front than save a few dollars on a PSU that will die on me 6 months down the road.

skadebo: I've been thinking for a while about mounting it vertically (basically, hang it like a picture on the wall) because there tends to be a little more heat build-up (warm air, but not hot) that just "pools" underneath the motherboard than i had originally figured on. It seems like i could easily get rid of that just by throwing the motherboard on the wall. Plus, there would be fewer horizontal surfaces to collect dust, and the heatsinks would probably stay cooler. Although i would probably have to grab a new CPU heatsink more suited to having the air flow across the board instead of just up from the board through the heatsink. I guess something to think about if i want to OC? Or if i want to save desk space .

ThatDood: Thanks! I'm a huge fan of Gentoo. The NIC was the only problem i had with this motherboard (i had to get my OS up and running first and then get the drivers for my NIC working) but other than that everything worked just fine.

You may get more feedback from the HTPC forums. Balancing noise and performance is very difficult and should be designed from the mainboard-up. I understand that you already have system components- but this thread could help others achieve what you are trying to do.

Two things you need to deal with are heat and noise from mainboard, PSU and CPU.

Firstly, I would look for a performance mainboard with great passive cooling (ASUS, for example). Also, a watercooling system with a top-mounted PA 120.2 with a single 140mm quiet fan to cool the CPU and GFX card, and another 140mm blowing on the VREGs/socket/chipset area.

Secondly, a Corsair HX series PSU is known to have very quiet operation- even under load. (I've owned the 620HX and it was silent unless I was a couple inches from it.)

Finally, sound dampening material throughout the case for drive mounts, PSU, case lining, fan mounts.

I would suggest a closed case for this type of solution, so that sound is reduced further from the PSU, 2x 140mm fans, watercooling pump and drives.

Why I would recommend moving to water cooling? It will remove 2 major sound sources and improve cooling to your CPU and GFX for performance increaes- not compromises. You can meet all your needs (Audio studio, gaming, graphics and design power).

Side note: I currently have an open chassis which I self constructed. The mainboard is flat-mounted so no components get heat soak from adjacent parts of the system. My temps are very good (Quad core Q6700 2.66 running at 3.33 Ghz, two 8800GTX OC cards) under full load running 4 folding@home projects with temps at 54-56 across four cores.

It does take up alot of desk space, and it does become a dust magnet. I am thinking of moving it into a real case and saving money on my Dust-Off supplies, and improving my sound reduction. I have 6 low-volt fans on it now, but it's starting to get annoying. I love the quiet and I don't need the highest OC.