Do you HAVE to have a fan on your heatsink?

PoPPeR

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2002
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I know this is an extremely n00b question, i just always used retail AMD heatsink/fans and finally went out and got a SK-7 the other day. I have a AMD 2000+ XP, is the fan detachable from that retail heatsink or do I have to go buy another one, or do I not have to have a fan at all?
 

sman789

Banned
May 6, 2003
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go buy a high performance/low volume fan

you OUGHT to have a fan on the HS....theres only two fanless heatsink i know of and 1 performs badly and the other on par with stock.....but its friggin huge
 

lchyi

Senior member
May 1, 2003
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Well just think about how a heatsink works. It dissapates heat by channeling it through it's "fins." Your CPU generates so much heat that if proper flowage of air doesn't go through them, the heat won't be dissapated fast enough. If you don't have a fan, that's like not having brakes in your car... sure it works but it could lead to disaster.
 

Davegod

Platinum Member
Nov 26, 2001
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XP or P4 cpu needs a fan on the heatsink. there are a couple of exotic HS that are passive, but theyre considered exotic for a reason, theyre really not suited to many.

on the SK-7 though you should have no problem with a quality 80mm low-rpm fan such as panaflo l1a, vantec stealth, or other low-rpm 80mm's from pabst/NMB. these i doubt you will hear over your case fans etc.

do you know what fan is currently atop your SK-7? you can remove the fan from that heatsink, indeed normally it comes without one and you have to buy seperately. open your case door and the fan should be held on with wire clips. simply unclip (and unplug) the current fan and replace with a new one. if your current fan is orange its probably a thermaltake "smart fan" which is LOUD - though it should have a little dial on the wire which you can turn to slow down the fan - keep an eye on cpu temps when you do this! note remember to turn OFF the pc when changing cpu fans! else you will likely kill the cpu very quickly.
 

0roo0roo

No Lifer
Sep 21, 2002
64,795
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sk7 requires a fan and a good one at that to perform. you can take off yuour amd stock fan and try it. the temp diffference might dissapoint yo8u
 

Icewind

Banned
Jul 9, 2003
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I guess if you wanna see your Athlon make a nice smokey smell, by all means don't use a fan. If you wanna keep your processor alive you gotta use a fan. Period.
 

rommelrommel

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2002
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Well, I think if you had a SLK-900 on a DLT3C XP1700+ undervolted @ stock speed it would be fine with no fan. I intend on testing this once i get my NF7 back from rma...
 

0roo0roo

No Lifer
Sep 21, 2002
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Originally posted by: rommelrommel
Well, I think if you had a SLK-900 on a DLT3C XP1700+ undervolted @ stock speed it would be fine with no fan. I intend on testing this once i get my NF7 back from rma...

yea, from overclockers.com forum i saw a post about how the new athlon chips can be extremely undervolted and still run at stock:)
 
Aug 1, 2003
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Here's a dumb question...

Does the heatsink fan blow cool air down, or does it blow the hot air air away for the heatsink?
 

JZilla

Senior member
Feb 11, 2003
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Originally posted by: RoyalTenenbaum
Here's a dumb question...

Does the heatsink fan blow cool air down, or does it blow the hot air air away for the heatsink?

Depends. But most times I think it is best to have the fan blowing down on the heatsink. I just read a few hours ago that the Alpha PAL 8045 works better with the fan blowing away from the hs. You could try both ways.
 

dxkj

Lifer
Feb 17, 2001
11,772
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Originally posted by: RoyalTenenbaum
Here's a dumb question...

Does the heatsink fan blow cool air down, or does it blow the hot air air away for the heatsink?

Certain HS's are designed for it to be sucked up through, most are the blow down into type.



Do you need a Fan on your HS? Not if you have enough air circulating in your case, but you will have silghtly higher temps that way.


 

WobbleWobble

Diamond Member
Jun 29, 2001
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I accidentally ran my computer with the fan not spinning (there was a wire caught in it) and I was wondering why my temps were higher than normal. The temps were only around the 67 degrees celcius range, so it wasn't too bad. I believe I do have adequate air flow in my case (2xZalman 80mm at low speed), but it didn't kill my CPU! This was for about a couple hours without running any CPU intensive programs at the time.

This was on a Athlon Thunderbird 1.2GHz with a Zalman CPNS-3100AlCu.