Does anybody have any experiences with passively cooled (fan-less) PCs? I'm trying to build for myself a HTPC, criteria are
- silence (that's why I want to try passive cooling)
- dimensions (the smaller the better)
- powerful enough for playback of 1080p MKVs
Unfortunately I have no experiences with passive cooling and google isn't very helpful :-) I'd like to hear some tips for the components
pittrek said:
Does anybody have any experiences with passively cooled (fan-less) PCs? I'm trying to build for myself a HTPC, criteria are
- silence (that's why I want to try passive cooling)
- dimensions (the smaller the better)
- powerful enough for playback of 1080p MKVs
Unfortunately I have no experiences with passive cooling and google isn't very helpful :-) I'd like to hear some tips for the components
I have a fanless home server, but I didn't build it, I bought it. I don't envy the task of trying to build one of these--not that it can't be done, but heat kills PCs, so one mistake and it's fried.
What I know from my home server that may help you:
- If it's a possibility, use an external power brick for your fanless power supply. Moving the AC/DC converter outside the case removes one more heat source.
- Use a mobile CPU. They run cooler than their desktop counterparts, and are often powerful enough for the job.
- Use heat pipes or some such thing. Heat just radiating on its own without fans doesn't follow a very helpful path out of the case. Heat pipes help direct it a bit.
- Metal case. The case itself should help conduct heat outwards. You wouldn't make your case out of wool, so why would you make it out of plastic? It helps if the case has cooling fins, allows natural convection ventilation, etc.
- Surprise! It's still noisy! The trick of silent PCs is that once you get rid of the noisiest components (the fans), you can now more clearly hear the noises made by the quieter ones. Hard drives should be solid state, or if they're mechanical, use quieter low-RPM 2.5" laptop drives, using a cushion to absorb vibration (but not so much to enclose the drive and not let the heat out). And some capacitors can still hum more than others (change your motherboard!), etc, etc.
...and that's why I bought a pre-made one ;)
Thanks for the reply.
I'd really like to build one, I like the method "learning by doing" :-) I already have a HTPC but it's getting really old and more and more noisy, so I'm thinking about making a fan-less one.
Could you write some tips about the PSU and other things?
I've been thinking about the J1800 motherboard (http://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-ga-j1800-d2h-motherboard-celeron,25942.html ) which has integrated a dual core Celeron processor.
The HDDs - I'm thinking about an SSD or a WD Green, but a 2.5" HDD could be better indeed. RAM - no idea which RAM I would use.
And I have absolutely NO idea about the other components :-)
Can I ask what pre-made did you buy if it's not secret?
It was a German company called Hush Technologies, but they don't seem to be around anymore. That was way back before HTPC's had quite taken off, so there wasn't much market for silent PCs (if you could even say there's much of one now). It's well-made--the case itself is an impressive and heavy piece of solid aluminum industrial art.
Well, my tips are just by observing what this outfit did with my server, and I'm not sure I have a lot more I can add. A power-brick style power supply (similar to those used in laptops), just seems to make a lot of sense for this application, but I'm not sure where you'd get them and how compatible they'd be with various cases and motherboards.
Intel publishes the TDP of their processors on their website--I would not assume that Celerons run cooler just because they're less capable. The TDP numbers are actually a good way of comparing the different chips to each other (lower TDP is cooler/better), even if they aren't exactly real-world usable numbers in their own right.
I'd really want to caution you about the hard drives, though. If you're really serious about making this thing quiet (and if it was sitting next to my TV, I'd want that too), 3.5" drives, even the quiet 5400 RPM ones, turn out to be obnoxious once the system fans are gone and no longer cover up their noise. If SSD is out of the question, I'd really go for 2.5" drives, 4200 RPM if possible. I think Samsung Spinpoints are very quiet, although I'm not so keen on their long-term reliability (just speed up your normal replacement cycle). The system I've got has an "adapter" for placing 2.5" drives into a 3.5" spot, which is basically two metal plates with a squishy material in between them. You sandwich the drive between the plates, screw the plates into the chassis (with rubber grommits because you can never use enough squishy material), and then the drive vibrations are pretty well dampened, although it's still the noisiest part of the system.
That said, lots of people say they can't even hear the "quiet" PC fans that are out there, and you might be lucky enough to be among them. Determine exactly how quiet you can tolerate FIRST, because targetting absolute silence is a path to craziness.
EDIT: I also wouldn't worry about RAM, except that it will need to fit under whatever monster heatsink/cooling system you end up using for the CPU.
I use one Sony Vaio VGX-XL from around 2007! Sure, it's not the fastest PC nowadays, but it's still capable of 1080p playback; find one at a good price, replace the video card, add RAM up to 8GB, and possibly upgrade the old dual core CPU with a faster quad core - up to 300% faster - and you got a reliable and very good looking HTPC!
Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com
Interesting tips guys. To be honest I start to think about an Intel NUC :-) They're not passive unfortunately, but they seem to be pretty quiet, so I think if I don't find something better I'll end up with one of them
Actually I think there's some third parties that do fanless systems based on the NUC. Worth looking into.
Have you tried this one?
price seems to be very atractive, but I can;t say much about company, they must be a new on the market
I'm about to build an nas out of these parts but it could easily become a silent pc if you added a graphics card and used ssd's instead of mechanical disks. I would still recommend using fans though. Just get some resistors and make them run at 600-900 rpm and you won't hardly hear the big 120mm's at all. The 80mm fan in the psu only kicks on when it hits a certain temp from what i understand. The entire mobo including cpu only draws around 40 watts so the fan on that thing would probably never run unless you plan on hooking up 10 4tb WD reds to it like I am going to. That minisys case that tiptop2004 posted looks pretty awesome though.
Luke threw twice…maybe.