Fastest processor you've ever seen with no heatsink/fan?

[JACKDRUID]

my Cyrix 486dlc 33mhz...

that thing had absolutely nothing on it when i bought it.. though its slow...about the speed of a 386dx 33mhz...

 

[Golgatha]

A waterblock is a heatsink. Any piece of crap you could attach to a processor could be a heatsink, even if it's not a very effective one....

And unfortunately, I'm not old enough to have seen a cpu that didn't have a heatsink. I didn't wander my way into the computer world until the first Celerons came out. And even then, I was just a computer newb. I didn't know what the insides of a computer looked like.

Other than computers, there are plenty of low power microprocessors that don't need heatsinks.

Actually, air is a heatsink. It's another piece of matter for the heat to transfer to.

 

[fffblackmage]

Also those Athlons had no IHS, so all of the heat from the die had to escape off of that little bitty die

Does the IHS really help dissipate heat better? I remember when Intel first started doing that, people were saying it was making cpu cooling worse. I think it does help, but more importantly, protects the die.

Did anyone check this out? Hint: It is a link to a video disguised as a thumbnail image.

Yeah, I did. *Thumbs up*

A waterblock is a heatsink. Any piece of crap you could attach to a processor could be a heatsink, even if it's not a very effective one....

Actually, air is a heatsink. It's another piece of matter for the heat to transfer to.

Yeah, after I posted that, I kind of realized that. Though now I guess I should have said a heatsink is anything that transfers heat away from the source better than air or something like that...

 

[Ben90]

Does the IHS really help dissipate heat better? I remember when Intel first started doing that, people were saying it was making cpu cooling worse. I think it does help, but more importantly, protects the die.

I know if you are using a heatsink, the IHS does make CPU cooling worse, basically the heat has to travel through more metal.

On the other hand if there is no heatsink and its just an IHS vs open core I would imagine that the IHS would provide better cooling as its able to dissipate the heat over more surface area

 

[evolucion8]

I heard somewhere that the latest Via CPU running at 1.8GHz don't need active cooling, probably I'm wrong though.

 

[cdbular]

The first CPU I had without heatsink, was the tiny AM386SX @ 40MHz from AMD. That thing did not even get warm.

The fastest I have used with no heatsink was an AMD 5x86 @ 133MHz. It worked fine and stable. It ran a little hot but never burned.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

back in the day I had a athlon 1200 with no heatsink on

I've killed my fair share of original Durons back in the day when I was testing HSFs :S

 

[wwswimming]

once I used a 3.0 GHz P4 system for about a half hour before it
stopped working.

turned out the heat sink fan wasn't plugged in.

i have an E6850 system running Vista and it has a Noctua tower
heatsink on it. i'm pretty sure it will run without a fan for a while,
just from passive cooling. when the fan runs it runs slow & it
still stays cool.

 

[William Gaatjes]

TI OMAP processor with an ARM core at 600MHz...

My colleague is interested in those. They are powerful indeed. I wonder what the planned 2GHz arm version will do...

 

[Arkaign]

once I used a 3.0 GHz P4 system for about a half hour before it
stopped working.

turned out the heat sink fan wasn't plugged in.

i have an E6850 system running Vista and it has a Noctua tower
heatsink on it. i'm pretty sure it will run without a fan for a while,
just from passive cooling. when the fan runs it runs slow & it
still stays cool.

Did the P4 chip and/or mobo die from the lack of cooling?

 

[HurleyBird]

Killer Xeno uses a 400MHz PowerPC core without a heatsink.

 

[wwswimming]

Did the P4 chip and/or mobo die from the lack of cooling?

no. actually it runs Pro-Engineer. well, it more sits there because i learned as much ProE as i could, and i'm not a big Pro-E fan. it's in a blue Aspire case, i forget the name of it.

when i discovered the situation, it was hot. too hot to touch. i think it did have a heatsink on it.

i didn't think too much about it, like take a temp measurement. it was like "oh, sh*t, got to fix this situation", which basically meant plugging in the fan.

but that was with the boxy shape P4 heat sink, not a tower, and it was with the P4, which was almost as hot as the Prescott P4.

i'm wondering if the low power CPU's that are available now, with a good tower heatsink, don't really need a fan.

 

[Arkaign]

no. actually it runs Pro-Engineer. well, it more sits there because i learned as much ProE as i could, and i'm not a big Pro-E fan. it's in a blue Aspire case, i forget the name of it.

when i discovered the situation, it was hot. too hot to touch. i think it did have a heatsink on it.

i didn't think too much about it, like take a temp measurement. it was like "oh, sh*t, got to fix this situation", which basically meant plugging in the fan.

but that was with the boxy shape P4 heat sink, not a tower, and it was with the P4, which was almost as hot as the Prescott P4.

i'm wondering if the low power CPU's that are available now, with a good tower heatsink, don't really need a fan.

Well, I can report on one success :

Celeron E3200 Dual Core (basically a C2D with less cache IIRC), I stuck it in a Shuttle G45 mini-PC, and connected the heatsink to it, but somehow during reassembly I unplugged the fan connector. Installed Win7 + a bunch of software, hooked it up as a Media PC, played a bunch of 720p and 1080p content with no dropped frames, ran backup over the network, and generally used it off and on for a week. Got some more ram, popped the thing open and was like 'holy crap!' no fan! It didn't give me any issues, and the heatsink in there is nowhere near as good as a decent tower heatpipe cooler.

Ambient temps in the room were low 70s.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Well, I can report on one success :

Celeron E3200 Dual Core (basically a C2D with less cache IIRC), I stuck it in a Shuttle G45 mini-PC, and connected the heatsink to it, but somehow during reassembly I unplugged the fan connector. Installed Win7 + a bunch of software, hooked it up as a Media PC, played a bunch of 720p and 1080p content with no dropped frames, ran backup over the network, and generally used it off and on for a week. Got some more ram, popped the thing open and was like 'holy crap!' no fan! It didn't give me any issues, and the heatsink in there is nowhere near as good as a decent tower heatpipe cooler.

Ambient temps in the room were low 70s.

Intel chips just stop the clock when they get to hot. When they cool down they continue. I can remember back in the days when repairing notebooks we sometimes did not have a choice to run the naked pcb with a naked cpu and a small temporary heatsink or no heatsink at all. Those where Pentium II and Pentium III models. Funny to see that stopclk signal go on and off. Those chips could not be destroyed with just a lack of heatsink. That is, those chips did age quicker and eventually some died early. Possibly the die itself was still ok, but the bonding materials did not like the high and fast temperature changes.

 

[nyker96]

never seen one without a HSF, even the one OP mentioned had one on just fell off accidentally. but did see a 386 back in the days with passive.

 

[Modelworks]

TI OMAP processor with an ARM core at 600MHz...

It gets even better with the ARM 800Mhz and the new S3 video. HD video in a postage sized chip with no heat sinks or high power consumption.

 

[evolucion8]

I accidentally once turned my PC on with the fan disconnected, but my CPU (Current) was running at stock, and I used the computer for about 30 minutes and never got a single issue, it didn't exceed the 57C temperatures in a room temperature of low 80's. 45nm is awesome.

 

[arcenite]

I seem to recall that my father's Pentium 90 did not have a heatsink.

That was my first overclocking experience, by the way. I got curious and opened up his machine... I found a jumper that said 90/100 on it, and changed it.

The machine worked for only a few minutes after that. Oops.

 

[SunnyD]

486DX-33 and maybe a DX2-80 (AMD variety). Also, I've seen a few naked Crusoe's and particularly VIA chips, probably running around 500-600MHz. As far as non-x86 goes, I've seen plenty of them running 600-800MHz.

 

[sxr7171]

I know if you are using a heatsink, the IHS does make CPU cooling worse, basically the heat has to travel through more metal.

On the other hand if there is no heatsink and its just an IHS vs open core I would imagine that the IHS would provide better cooling as its able to dissipate the heat over more surface area

What if the IHS were a thinner, pure copper unit? Then wouldn't it help spread the heat even to the heatsink base? With today's 12 heatpipe coolers 6 running on each side I suppose it would be good to spread the heat as evenly as possible to the heatsink base.

 

[DuallyX]

Slot Athlon 550mhz - parent's machine, HSF had fallen off, and computer appeared to be working normally, although I doubt it did much more than Word and IE.

 

[Cattykit]

Celeron 300A @ 450mhz I had. I didn't have a case and the whole system ran fine lying on a book.

 

[krypto1300]

I had a 486sx 33MHz back in the day that had no heatsink or fan. I believe many 486dx processors had no heatsink requirement either. dx2's almost always had heatsink on them.

 

[krypto1300]

Slot Athlon 550mhz - parent's machine, HSF had fallen off, and computer appeared to be working normally, although I doubt it did much more than Word and IE.

Those old Slot A and Slot 1 CPU's actually had heatspreaders that the fan would attach to didn't they.

 

[phaxmohdem]

My first three PC's had CPUs sans heatsinks. The first was a 286-6MHz, then moved up to a 386SX-16MHz, and finally a 486DX-33 overclocked to 40MHz After that everything else I've owned had a heatsink on it.