Passive Cool Duron with Alpha PAL-8045?

I have an HTPC running in a Micro-ATX desktop case. It is running a Duron 1600 with a stock AMD 2500+ cooler along with 2 60mm case fans @ 7v. Unfortunately it is too noisy for my Living Room and was contimplating installing an Alpha 8045 as a PASSIVE heatsink.

I believe that I can Underclock the chip to about 1200Mhz or so (fine for the HTPC) and possibly lower the voltage with the wire trick. Would the passive Alpha be enough to cool the processor?

I would use a fan on it, but the DVD-Rom actually hit the stock HS/F, so the Alpha with fan would not fit...tried it!

Well you could try it, that is the only way to really know for sure, it might, it might not, I just really cant say for sure. So try it out, and tell us how it goes

I have been able to passively cool tbred b's all the way to 1.4GHz - at such speeds they need little voltage. Try running the duron first at stock speeds and the lowest vcore it is stable at, then lower speed/vcore until the temperature is reasonable.

I'd say about 1.2GHz is reasonable

What VCore should I shoot for? Don't want to keep removing the HSF. According to the Wire-Trick, I can get it down to 1.475.

If you don't have enough room for an appropriately sized fan for that sink check to see if you have enough room for something smaller like a fan from a P1/K6-2 sink. I've got mountains of fans like that and have managed to get some stats for some of them, they average about 10cfm, that's 10cfm more than nothing and it might be enough to do the trick. They are generally pretty quiet too.

The PAL 8045 is very quiet with a fan on it, if you had a silent fan on it I'm sure it would be inaudible (especially if you took it down to 7v).
Just a thought (I'm sure you'd get more speed out of it too )

Your situation is a lot like mine used to be. I had two machines in my living room. One an easily passive cooled Tualatin, and a second rather impossible 2100+ palomino.

However, I have just landed myself a thermaltake silentboost cooler, and I'm VERY sure this one will do the trick for you without any underclocking.

Throttle the fan down to low speeds, kill those 60 mm case fans, and you got the same rig I now have. Virtually no noise... only when the DVD drive churns away or the disk defrags.

Cheers, Flix