Passively cooled Celeron E3300?

[Jeff7181]

Just wondering if it would be possible to passively cool a Celeon E3300. Says it's a 65 watt chip... if I have a case with good flow, think I could get away with passive cooling?

 

[Accord99]

Should be a piece of cake. Its measured power consumption is around 31W:

http://www.behardware.com/articles/778-15/giant-roundup-131-intel-and-amd-processors.html

 

[Zap]

No problem. You just need the right heatsink if you want to do it right, such as the Scythe Ninja series or the Cooler Master Hyper Z600. Of course the Celeron probably puts out so little heat that you can get by with just about any decent heatsink.

If you're trying to make it quieter, you should just lower the fan speeds of the CPU and the case fans. That works a lot better than trying to run the CPU w/o a fan and relying solely on case fans. Trust me, I've done this on several of my systems including overclocked dual cores such as an E6750 @3.2GHz passively using a Scythe Ninja.

 

[Key West]

Yea, fans aren't loud at all..

My hypermaster 212+ on smart fan mode is sooo quiet.. I can't even tell if my PC is on or not.

If anything, it's the hum of the hard drive is louder.

 

[ElFenix]

/points out that technically blowing air around with a fan is not active cooling, though computer nerds have so corrupted this it's hard to find the actual definition outside a high school physics text book anymore

/leaves thread

 

[Jeff7181]

/points out that technically blowing air around with a fan is not active cooling, though computer nerds have so corrupted this it's hard to find the actual definition outside a high school physics text book anymore

/leaves thread

/points out that technically I asked about passive cooling and all discussion here is about passive cooling so... don't let the door hit ya?

 

[ShawnD1]

/points out that technically blowing air around with a fan is not active cooling, though computer nerds have so corrupted this it's hard to find the actual definition outside a high school physics text book anymore

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_cooling

The term "passive" implies that energy-consuming mechanical components like pumps and fans are not used.

:hmm:

 

[Ksyder]

ok, ok... we know what he meant... passive cooling on the cpu and active case fans for the system as a whole.

Just a suggestion, though, if you are using integrated graphics you will really regret using no cpu fan at all. Because the stock intel h.s. is top down and provides a decent bit of cooling to the northbridge. I tried the exact same thing with an e3300, and while the cpu heatsink was cool as a cucumber with the fan unplugged, the northbridge was too hot to touch.

Not to mention the VRM's, etc around the cpu, you'd be better off running a cpu fan to help keep surrounding components cool, especially if your case fans are low speed.
Just make sure you are running a 4 wire PWM fan such as the one included with the cpu and its very quiet.

I thought the same thing too, "Why do I need to run a cpu fan if this cpu is so cool already?" I learned the hard way that it is best to use at least some active cooling on the cpu to keep heat moving around that area of the motherboard.

 

[Zap]

Just make sure you are running a 4 wire PWM fan such as the one included with the cpu and its very quiet.

Yup, a PWM fan with Smart Fan enabled in BIOS makes for really quiet systems.

 

[n7]

Yes, you definitely could.

However, i don't understand the fascination w/ passive CPU cooling, as there are so many ways to use basically inaudible fans for cooling now noise simply doesn't have to be an issue.

 

[Ksyder]

I'm using an e3300 oc'ed to 2.9ghz (as high as the mb fsb controls will allow), along with a Seasonic 300watt 80+ Bronze psu, integrated graphics, stock intel hs, and one case fan on low in an antec mini p180... running 24/7 in my bedroom 3 feet from my head and its very very quiet... I absolutely hate computer noise but I actually like the faint hum of the system.

The psu is mounted on the bottom, and is completely inaudible, which leaves the case fan and the cpu fan as noise sources. The sound of hard drives clicking at times is louder than the fans themselves.

Edit: Just checked the system, and I take back the comment about the psu being inaudible. However, it is still very quiet.