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Quiet cooling for an o/c'd 2600+ in HTPC

G

GeekSupportCom

Senior member
Hi All,

Would anyone have a recommendation for a HSF that's going to be in a HTPC? The cpu will be a mobile 2600+ and I'll try to o/c it to at least 2.4GHz. Most of my searches refer to 939 cpus and one that looked promising is the Zalman 7700. Are there any similar for socket A boards?

It will be in an Antec Overture II case and Abit NF7-S 2.0 board and a ~100mm vertical clearance for any fanless options.

Thanks
 
I believe the Zalman 7000 is available for Socket A and performs almost as well. If you want it really, really quiet pull the fan out and substitute an undervolted Nexus.
 
Originally posted by: Fresh Daemon
Yes. It's harder with the Zalmans than with most heatsinks but still possible. You have to do a bit of modding.
Click to expand...

You're right, the 7000 is compatible with socket a, but unfortunately not with my NF7-S (Chart)

I saw that the Thermalright SP-97 is a good contender for being quite efficient but looks like the fins go beyond the motherboard's edge on an abit nf7-s. maybe it's just the angle of the camera? My HTPC has a HD cage litteraly right next to the mobo nearest to the cpu.
 
Two hsf's that come to mind for tight quarters are Tt's Silent Boost and the TMD version of Vantec's Aeroflow. I haven't tried the former yet, but I also don't yet have a tuner/ video capture adapter I will use, so I don't have all the parts ready for my own HTPC system, in a "real" HTPC-type horizontal box. Mine is going to have an XP-2800 in it.

Meanwhile, my (Socket A) gaming system has an XP 3000, 400 FSB, OC'd. The TMD Aeroflow wasn't quite up to handling that much heat (ran around 59-60 C at idle if the PC room got up above the "cool" temps I try to keep ambient at), so I swapped in a Gigabyte Neon 7, which is quieter, but takes up more real estate -- probably too much for an HTPC, but then the HTPC box doesn't have any window, and this gaming PC does (the Silent Boost is waiting its turn as a next project build here). That Gigabyte cooler looks very good on the 3000 (Royal Blue Neon color), so much so that I wanted another one for a newly windowed "Utility" PC here, and couldn't find it at a price I wanted to pay.

Another mid-sized cooler with a lighted up fan that I like the looks of, now that windowed PC boxes are available in my budget range, is Aerocool's Copper Cooler Extreme, quieter than a TMD Aeroflow (which isn't producing an objectionable sound level), but louder than the Silent Boost. And then you can get Aerocool and Aeroflow mixed as well -- I had to edit my second reference to the Vantec product above, where I'd misnamed it.

You might also want to check in at one or another of the web sites with HTPC subjects as the central reason for creating the sites, where they discuss the comparative efficiency, silence, and size of various hsf's all the time. There's one with an "AV" in the name that has a very busy message forum attached.


😉
 
The best socket A heatsinks were made by Thermalright.

The SLK900A, SLK900U and the SP-97 were the best ones going.

I have my 1700+ DLT3C JIUHB @ 2133 ghz @ 1.62vcore actual. Hits about 49-50C on full load. Using a Thermalright SLK900A and a 92mm Panaflo L1A @ 10% (Speedfan speeds)

Speedfan is awesome in yours (and my) case because it allows dynamic under/overclocking. I have mine set to 100mhz FSB when the CPU usage has been below 40% for 30 seconds then 133mhz FSB when the cpu runs at over 70% usage for 5 seconds. Allows me to access 2133mhz when I need it and allows the processor to clock down to roughly 1600mhz when it doesnt need the power. Doesnt fiddle with voltages but Im sure that the automatic clock control does something useful temps wise.

One question though.... if its an HTPC, why do you need to be able to overclock it to ~2.4ghz? Surely you wouldnt need that much power for viewing stuff.
 
Originally posted by: Elcs
The best socket A heatsinks were made by Thermalright.

The SLK900A, SLK900U and the SP-97 were the best ones going.

I have my 1700+ DLT3C JIUHB @ 2133 ghz @ 1.62vcore actual. Hits about 49-50C on full load. Using a Thermalright SLK900A and a 92mm Panaflo L1A
Click to expand...
I haven't seen a new SLK900-anything offered for sale in a year or longer. I never have seen a clarification of what difference there is/was between an SI-97 and an SP-97. The SI-97's are still being advertised, and are regularly available online. But it seems to me that it's longer than a year now since the SP-97 was similarly and readily available. I've not taken measurements in the HTPC box I bought from Directron for my own (eventual) project in it, but I am pretty sure it's not gong to have room for most of the "high efficiency" HSF's around these days. The Silent Boost goes on sale fairly regularly for an affordable sub-$30 figure, but even at MSRP, it's not hugely expensive.

Incidentally, to the OM: the place I suggested you check in at is called "AVS Forum".


😎
 
Originally posted by: Kiwi
Two hsf's that come to mind for tight quarters are Tt's Silent Boost and the TMD version of Vantec's Aeroflow. I haven't tried the former yet, but I also don't yet have a tuner/ video capture adapter I will use, so I don't have all the parts ready for my own HTPC system, in a "real" HTPC-type horizontal box. Mine is going to have an XP-2800 in it.

*snip*

😉
Click to expand...

I'll check out the Silent Boost. It seems to do pretty well, even better than the SLK900 which is surprising.

:-D
 
Originally posted by: Elcs

*snip*

One question though.... if its an HTPC, why do you need to be able to overclock it to ~2.4ghz? Surely you wouldnt need that much power for viewing stuff.
Click to expand...

It's going to be my NAS/download box too and i'm going to be using a cheap raid5 card that doesn't have its own on-board processor. Oh yeah, i'm cheap (read: poor) too 😛. If I can save a few bucks and get a faster processor to boot, I'm all for it.
 
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