Silent Cooling (1 Viewer)

[James]

We all know about the passive cases (Hush Technologies and MCUBED HFX) which are very expensive. However, if you have enought space in your case you can drop a Cooler Master GeminII in there (http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/HTPC_cooling).

I've got one in my OrigenAE H5 (http://www.origenae.com/en/htpc_h5.htm) which is as low profile as possible for a full hight case and it fits in with room to spare. (see attached photos).

This is a great heat sink, its cooling my Intel E6420 in passive mode without any problems. I have a passive graphics card in the box too (8500GT), which is running much hotter than the CPU.

Now I have my case down to just one 80mm fan in the PSU and will be looking at some passive external PSUs in the future

 

[Marcusb]

looks like a good solution, but just remember that if you remove the PSU fan in future, then you will have no active airflow and your heatsinks will probably not be enough.

 

[mattmannz]

That's a nice setup.

I have the same case with a Gigabyte EP35DSR motherboard, looks similar to yours. I am running a passive 8600GT and a dual core 2.8ghz cpu with a similar cooler.

I have a 120mm ball bearing fan on the top of mine and didn't quite have enough clearance issues so had to relieve the case lid to allow the fan to vent out. I am using a controller to run the fan very slowly.

I am running three hard drives and a different PSU to your. My stock PSU died and I found a replacement, can't remember the brand, but it has an ultra quiet fan as the original was probably the noisiest component.

The interior gets very hot but the CPU runs quite cool, doesn't get above 50c at full load and is rock solid.

Matt.