Heat Management in a silent PC

[bogdanbiv]

Hello,

I've build a silent PC with an Intel Dual core E4500 part (stock cooler) and a fanless AMD HD2600 card.

CPU was pretty silent OOB, but the GPU over heated to 70C, raising the system temperature.
I tried to put some case coolers, but to no avail - they are outperformed.

Now when I connect the case cooler and close the case lid the system is no more silent.

What can I do beside replacing the case cooler with a better one?

[curaga]

water cooling, peltiers, a less hot graphics card. Wait for AMD to enable Powerplay.
Edit: and of course, install a bigger heatsink

[Melcar]

Try using a bigger sink on the GPU, like the Arctic Cooling Accelero. You should be able to run it passive on that card. Just make sure you have "okay" airflow inside your case.

[deanjo]

peltiers

Peltiers won't decrease the internal temp of the case though.

[chibacityblues]

Get yourself a Scythe Ninja 2 -- one of the best passive CPU coolers. There are a few better ones like the Thermalright IFX or Scythe Orochi but these cost twice as much, at least here in Europe. Plus they are harder to install and the Ninja is sufficient anyway. Does your case support a 120mm fan in the back?

Last, you could decrease CPU voltage if your BIOS supports it (or try the PHC-patches). My E6400 ran at 0.95V (1.35V default), temperature dropped from 56?C idle (~59?C load) to 36?C (~45?C load).

[bogdanbiv]

water cooling, peltiers, a less hot graphics card. Wait for AMD to enable Powerplay.
Edit: and of course, install a bigger heatsink

That was another question: can I underclock the board using the ATI binary blob? I assume the free software drivers do not enable PowerPlay.
What about newer cards? Are AMD Radeon HD36xx or HD4xxx any better at keeping cool? What about the future HD5xxx?


More of a rethorical question since I have to and can test it my self:
Would it be a big performance penalty to underclock + undervolt it?

NOTE: The reason I haven't tested undervolting it is that At the moment I replaced the ASUS RadeonHD 2600 fanless with an Nvidia 8500GT fanless which seemed to be better at keeping cooler. On the longterm though, I want to go back to ATI and use one of their free drivers.

[bogdanbiv]

Get yourself a Scythe Ninja 2 -- one of the best passive CPU coolers. There are a few better ones like the Thermalright IFX or Scythe Orochi but these cost twice as much, at least here in Europe. Plus they are harder to install and the Ninja is sufficient anyway. Does your case support a 120mm fan in the back?

Last, you could decrease CPU voltage if your BIOS supports it (or try the PHC-patches). My E6400 ran at 0.95V (1.35V default), temperature dropped from 56?C idle (~59?C load) to 36?C (~45?C load).

I have room for
front: 1 120mm fan (installed a Ninja fan, not sure which)
back: 2 92mm (or 90mm) (both empty)

But since I wanted a silent pc, adding fans is a counter intuitive solution: As far as I know noise from fans adds up so two fans at 19dbA make aprox. the same noise as one at, say, 32dbA.

I'll see what I can do in BIOS - I hope I can undervolt the CPU and PCIe bus.
In BIOS my CPU is shown to be at 36C and my system temp is at 51 C.
I have no option to undervolt the CPU or the PCIe. I can however underclock it the CPU (why? it's already cool enough) and the PCIe. I've put the PCIe bus frequency at 90Mhz, But that doesn't influence the clock of the GPU chip, does it?

[leef]

Just a little air over the heat sink (of the passive video card) makes a huge difference. Consider a slow fan aimed at the video card heat sink (or baffle the case so more air moves over the video card). Maybe open a slot by the card.

Is 70 deg. too hot for the card? Did it freeze? Were there video artifacts? If not, there may be no need to change anything.

Google "SPCR".

[bogdanbiv]

Just a little air over the heat sink (of the passive video card) makes a huge difference. Consider a slow fan aimed at the video card heat sink (or baffle the case so more air moves over the video card). Maybe open a slot by the card.

Is 70 deg. too hot for the card? Did it freeze? Were there video artifacts? If not, there may be no need to change anything.

Sometimes I get a change in colours: the whole screen turns greenish for a fraction of a second (white becomes pale green, yellow is a lighter green), then the next second the screen turns to fuchsia (a combination of red+blue). Then a few seconds it works normal.

Now, it seldom does that - I think it's the front 120mm cooler that keeps the board cooler.

Google "SPCR":
Yes, I know their forums. I'll see what they have to say about this.

I was hoping for more info on how PowerPlay works in Linux. As I understand it - it doesn't. What about the future then? Does AMD/ATI plan to introduce PowerPlay in Linux? When?
Will that enable under/overclocking + fan control for the GPU?

[leef]

The matrix showing which features are supported by which drivers for which cards may actually exist.

http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature

Powerplay seems to be enabled for some cards in fglrx(?), but I forgot to save the thread reference. Try searching for powerplay.