Is it possible to run a 77-Watt CPU with compact fanless heatsink?

[Nobi]

Hi everyone,

I have an Ivy i5 3570k (77 Watt) and i was wondering if i could cool it somewhat acceptably with a fanless setup of Silverstone's NT-06 Pro heatsink.

According to Silverstone's website, The recommended CPU TDP for the NT-06 Pro's fanless setup is 65 Watt.

Is it possible to run this setup without substantial overtime damage to the CPU?
Will i risk frying my CPU during OS installation or heavy gaming sessions? I'm not going to do any video or image editing, i play counterstrike on all low video settings at most but occasionally i'd like to try out battlefield or crisis. Also looking forwards to upgrading to Nvidia's 780Ti to replace my 660 Ti soon.

Took me 12 years to make my first post on Anandtech.

 

[PeteRoy]

Mainboard have protection to prevent overheat CPU in case of fan failures which happen often and CPU usually survive this with no problems.

You can try to power up the system with the heatsink only and go to BIOS, there you will see temperatures, some motherboards put the CPU on 100% load when you enter the BIOS so you will see load temperatures.

If you start installing the OS and the CPU will overheat then you can trust the motherboard will just shut down the computer immediately to prevent CPU damage.

 

[dma0991]

You can use heatsinks that are made for passive operation. Thermalright HR-02 will be able to cool it passively, because of its large surface area and has a wider fin spacing(denser fin spacing requires a fan to work optimally).

If you insist on using the Silverstone NT-06 Pro, get a low speed fan and physically(such as Noctua's U.L.N.A) limit its speed to be ~700RPM. Lower fan speed will result in higher temps but the Core i5 3570K has a TJmax of 105C. With the Silverstone NT-06 Pro, maximum load(non overclocked) should be 70-80C but still way below the 105C mark.

Don't worry about damage as the Core i5 3570K will automatically thermal throttle the speed or cause an abrupt shutdown once it comes close to its TJMax.

 

[aigomorla]

compact + fanless => its like you telling us to get 10 and then up it to the 10th power.

10^10...

lol...

usually if u hold one value.. u need to use the oposite for the other value... not reduce both values together..

Compact + fanless => near impossible unless u account for watercooling, because u can move the heat away with water.
however the radiator to be passive will be pretty massive....

 

[Nobi]

Hi,

I really appreciate your feedbacks above.

Currently I'm running a H100i setup and the noise level just bugs the hell out of me. The problem isn't the pump which is very quiet. I tried swapping the stock fans for a pair of 120mm AP QE fans then ramping things down to 500rpm but the damn thing is just loud. Now I've completely unplugged all case fans except for the rear exhaust and only using 1 fan as both case front/rad intake.

From the look of it, the NT-06 pro has a large enough fins-spacing design to allow some passive cooling. Reading more on the subject, the fan setup has a noise level at +60 dba during loads so i guess I'm no longer going that route. It's interesting that Silverstone omits this information from their advertised specification and packaging.

I think I'm going to try out Noctua's NH-C14. The fins have a higher density so i guess fanless is out the window. But advertised at 18 dba (hopefully with u.l.n.a), i guess installing some noise dampening pads around the chassis would do the final trick.

 

[PliotronX]

compact + fanless => its like you telling us to get 10 and then up it to the 10th power.

10^10...

lol...

usually if u hold one value.. u need to use the oposite for the other value... not reduce both values together..

Compact + fanless => near impossible unless u account for watercooling, because u can move the heat away with water.
however the radiator to be passive will be pretty massive....

Is there such a beast radiator specifically designed with a lot of surface area with large gaps between fins purely for convection based cooling?

 

[Nobi]

Is there such a beast radiator specifically designed with a lot of surface area with large gaps between fins purely for convection based cooling?

I don't think we're quite there yet. I'd be in doubt however that water cooling would head down that road and call it optimization considering the size, cost and overall efficiency against conventional water/air/heat sink cooling solutions.

I'd love to see the market develop other/better cooling solutions (may be commercialize on liquid nitrogen?) I remember seeing the first water cooled desktops back in 2001? 2002? And even now the solutions are there mostly to serve the computer enthusiast segment.

I'm counting on India to develop the next piratical noise/dust free cooling solutions. I don't think the majority of people from northern hemisphere NEED better cooling solutions since it's pretty damn cold up there already.

Clips from Sandia lab
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWQZNXEKkaU

 

[fleshconsumed]

Is there such a beast radiator specifically designed with a lot of surface area with large gaps between fins purely for convection based cooling?

Scythe Ninja Mini. I scored one about a year ago on ebay, but they're getting really difficult to find now. They still need some airflow, but 700-800rpm would be plenty and completely inaudible.

 

[_Rick_]

I'm cooling an i5 750 with a fanless Scythe Yasya and a case with okay airflow (CM Stacker with 12 HDDs and 6 fans - 3x 120 front, 120 rear, 80 top and PSU) and no GPU. Even when compoling at full throttle, I don't get any serious temperatures (less than 50C when compiling on all cores), and "idle" (one vlc instance encoding video @ 25% usage of a single core) around 30C.

With a big GPU though, ambient temperatures will be much higher, and you will have less effective cooling. I would honestly recommend a slow-turning fan on a medium cooler. Something like the 92mm Noctua tower cooler/fan combo is ideal for this type of environment.

 

[smackababy]

I don't think we're quite there yet. I'd be in doubt however that water cooling would head down that road and call it optimization considering the size, cost and overall efficiency against conventional water/air/heat sink cooling solutions.

I'd love to see the market develop other/better cooling solutions (may be commercialize on liquid nitrogen?) I remember seeing the first water cooled desktops back in 2001? 2002? And even now the solutions are there mostly to serve the computer enthusiast segment.

I'm counting on India to develop the next piratical noise/dust free cooling solutions. I don't think the majority of people from northern hemisphere NEED better cooling solutions since it's pretty damn cold up there already.

Clips from Sandia lab
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWQZNXEKkaU

I would wonder if incorporating a better pump and a condenser of some sort would help. You'd have to have it calibrated correctly to now get condensation though and a pump able to work 24/7.

There is a lot of cooling efficiency research being done for data centers (as the cost of running HVAC units 24/7 is a lot higher than spending a bit more on some "exotic" cooling).