pentium 166: do I even need a fan?

[dfi]

I have a pentium 166 machine with the stock hsf. I'm wondering if I can get away with unplugging the fan? Or maybe getting a bigger heatsink would suffice? Any suggestions/recommendations?

dfi

 

[mgpaulus]

I have a 166MMX that I am running @ 200, using a slightly larger HS/F & AS-II. Haven't had any meltdowns, nor any kernel panics (Running debian 2.3). So I guess it's pretty much rock steady, as it's running seti@home 24x7.

Why do you want to get rid of the fan? If it's noise, you can get some 50mm that are really quiet.
I would think that the problem with a totally passive solution is that it would require good air-movement (I'm talking about quality as well as quantity) inside the case. If you don't have any airflow in the case, then the bare heatsink would create a "hot pocket" around itself. However, If you do have decent air movement, you might be able to get buy with an oversized HS (Say one rated for an AMD K6-2/500) and some Arctic Silver 2/3.

I had a couple of my fans go out, and here's what I replaced them with: 50mm fan. Reasonably quiet, and move a decent amount of air for their size.

 

[japetto]

If your not overclocking you can definately get by with just a heatsink + sufficiant thermal grease.
If your going to unplug the cpu's heatsink fan it might be a good idea to just take it off, though.
I also think you should at least have one exhaust fan, which you probably already have in (with) your power supply. Good Luck! 😉

 

[Witchfinder]

Its a criminal waste NOT to clock these things at 200Mhz, even the 150 does it with ease without getting hot under the collar, I would recommend a fan unless you manage to bodge a small Duron or PPGA Celeron heatsink onto it.. ASII isn`t required and is really a waste as standard thermal grease is fine.

The question is, WHY would you want to unplug the fan?, I have a 150 (non-MMX which clocked at 200 fine too) somewhere and I remember the fan to be virtually silent and totally reliable Sanyo Denki is fitted /supplied to all Intel retail units at least from the 486DX2-66 up to the Celeron 1300..

 

[dfi]

Hrm, I stuck a pen to stop the cpu fan... and it is really quiet. The only other fan in this old computer is this psu fan. So I guess I'm gonna have to replace that.

dfi

 

[Lithium381]

nope! no fan required....though you should probably run it up to 200mhz and then put a fan on it....either way use a nice heatsink and thermal paste

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

<< Hrm, I stuck a pen to stop the cpu fan... and it is really quiet. The only other fan in this old computer is this psu fan. So I guess I'm gonna have to replace that.

dfi >>


just run the fan at 5 volts. thats what i do with all of my fans. my duron 750 has an 80mm @ 5v, silent. my p233mmx has an 80mm mounted on it running at 5v. silent also. both systems' loudest parts are the hard drives. (especially the p233, if i tell the hard drive to power down while its running, its SO much quieter. of course it powers back up within 20 seconds because it needs to read/write something :/)