What is the MOST QUIET way to air cool an Athlon XP 2600?

Mike521 · Sep 20, 2003

Topic!

I was doing water cooling for a couple of months but first of all my pump got loud and noisy for some reason, and my water turned brown (guess I shoulda put chorline in it or something) so I got ****ed and put my thermaltake volcano 9 back on.

The problem is, its loud as hell!

Does anyone know what the quietist method of air cooling this cpu would be?

I'm not overclocking anymore, I'm happy with it at stock speed, so I just want it to be quiet now. I play games though, so I assume I can't get away with the stock fan, right?

Right now, after playing Tribes 2 for an hour, my cpu temp is 59 C, and my fan is spinning at 5,200 RPM.

My case is always fairly hot because its small so the hot air builds up inside it. I could hook up an exhaust fan but that would add to the noise problem.

Any suggestions?

Deathknight · Sep 20, 2003

Well a thermalright SK-7 coupled with a very quiet fan like a panaflo L1A will be whisper queit (21dba fan). The sk-7 is a much superior HS to the volcano 9 so it shouldn't have any problem cooling your stock speed cpu even with the low cfm.

Am I understanding right that you have no case fans running on your case? You may want to consider at least running 1 or 2 very quiet case fans as well. If you pick your fans right the noisest thing in your case will still probably be the power supply. 21dba fans are quiet enough that you will probably hear your harddrives clicking

LtBlue14 · Sep 20, 2003

if your case doesn't have good ventilation holes for the fans, you may want to cut the 80mm holes out entirely and put a finger guard there, to help with noise (since the small-punched-hole-design of some ventilation holes increases the pressure on the fan and makes it louder)

Ffats · Sep 20, 2003

Pssh, just use stock. No exhaust needed, chips can handle more heat than 60c..

To get it as low as possible with quiet, I also would reccomend a SK6 and throw a low CFM fan on top. No need for exhaust or intake, really.

dguy6789 · Sep 20, 2003

chances are your water cooling system had bubbles in it, or was vibrating, just set it back up put about 10% of it as anti freeze, and turn your pump on and off for 10 - 20 min, this will get rid of most bubbles assuming you have a resovoir, and also put like foam or something beneath the pump, to get rid of vibration, and this will give you a quiet, clean pc. As for if yo ustill wanna use air, i reccomend gettign a real quiet fan and putting it on an sk6 7 or what ever.

JDXNC · Sep 20, 2003

On the V9... are you using the manual control or heat sensor? Almost anyone who has had a V9 has found that they actually cool better with the fan running a little lower than full blast. Mine cooled best around 4000rpm, at max rpm the temp never dropped a bit from what it was at 4000. I think its because the heatsink itself was the limiting factor, and not the fan, the fan is actually quite good.

EDIT: OH and remove the grill from it, it makes it a bit noisier, you will see what I mean if you remove it. Just watch your fingers if you play around in your case afterwards

Mr. $T$ · Sep 20, 2003

Nothing is more quiet then Passive

Although you might want to try to undervolt it, just keep lowering the voltage untill you processor becomes too unstable then bump it up alittle to insure stability, I have a Pally 2100+ running at 1.3v and 1.4GHz

it makes only 35w according to sisoft.

Mike521 · Sep 21, 2003

yea I dunno what happened with my pump, I took it out and cleaned it but it was still noisy even after all the air got out. It was making this loud clicking noise. guess it was just a crappy pump. or maybe the brown crap in the water screwed it up.

Thanks for the tips about the heat sink, I'm gonna order one now (sk-7 or 6) and grab one of those fans you guys mentioned

Mr T, I thought the overclockers.com review of those passive heatsinks said they were crappy?

cherryp00t · Sep 21, 2003

zalman 7000A-CU

Mr. $T$ · Sep 21, 2003

Mike521 said:
Mr T, I thought the overclockers.com review of those passive heatsinks said they were crappy?

For Preformence CPU sinks then no way to Zalman, Zalman is only good for Quiet not even close to high end Swiftech, Thermalright.

but if you are not overclocking then no need to worry.

Mike521 · Sep 21, 2003

well I ordered an SK7 and a panaflo, lets see how it goes... *fingers crossed*

I was thinking of those SK 900 ones but I figured I'd try the cheap one.

bet it doesn't work and I have to order an expensive one anyway. then that won't work either.

illig · Sep 21, 2003

i'm running a 2100+ @ 2600+ speeds and it's staying at a comfy ~50ºC with an SK-7 and a variable speed YS-TECH 80MM set to half power (i'm assuming ~7v)

just get an thermalright heatsink ,and stick a panaflo L1A on it.. you'll be a much happier person

eXCeSS · Sep 22, 2003

get a swiftech block with a 120mm fan running at 7v.

Mike521 · Sep 26, 2003

wow, this is great!

I have the SK-7 installed now, and I put the thermaltake volcano 9 fan on top of it, and hooked up the rheostat so I could manually control the speed. Right now, after being idle for a half hour or so, with the fan at a fairly quiet 3,500 RPM, my system is at 54.50 C, which I think is very nice!

I can probably lower the fan down to 3,000 when nothing is going on (like if I leave it on overnight just idling) and get away with it, I bet.

and when I'm playing games, I can just manually turn it up again. Before I had it at 4,200 RPM while playing Tribes 2, and my temp went up to 57ish, no big deal at all.

man if I had known it was this easy to quietly air cool a pc, I never would've went through all the trouble of water cooling!!

MRip · Sep 27, 2003

My entire system is watercooled, and the only fan is one Vantec stealth 120mm spining at 1200rpms max. I can even run it with the fan turned off for a few hours if I need absolute silence. I think that is worth it.

Deathknight · Sep 27, 2003

Glad the new HS is working out for ya

I do have one comment about this though:

Mike521 said:
I can probably lower the fan down to 3,000 when nothing is going on (like if I leave it on overnight just idling) and get away with it, I bet.

Instead of just leaving it idle all night, you could always FOLD!

Restorer · Sep 27, 2003

Or SETI!

Or just put it on stand-by: then you can turn the fan down to near-nothing and not worry about heat.

Mike521 · Sep 27, 2003

FOLD? SETI? huh I'm really confused lol

standby shuts down the processor? really?

What is the MOST QUIET way to air cool an Athlon XP 2600?

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