Nearly-passive celeron cooling.

Hello!

I have an idea for my wife's HP celeron 800 for nearly-passive cooling. (We would just put on a bigger heatsink with a slower fan, but it has capacitors too close to the socket, and adapters aren't made for the oddball 50mm size.)

Like many OEM PC's, it has a plastic elbow / duct that goes right over the CPU to a hole in the back of the CPU. The hole is big enough for a 92x92x25 mm fan.

I have a fairly tall (but with small footprint) HS (no fan), maybe 1.5 inches tall on the fins, which I know fits a socket 370. (6 rows of 9 fins for 54 fins total) I was thinking of putting this passive heatsink on the socket and then hooking up a medium-CFM 92mm fan on the duct outlet, either ducting in or out.

Do you expect this to be a sufficient setup? (We won't be overclocking the OEM PC.) The CPU is an 800 MHz Celeron processor, 100 MHz FSB. The S-Spec is SL4TF. According to Intel, max junction temp for this .18 micron chip is 80C.

Any recommended 92mm fans and/or airflow levels?

I had considered the 92mm Antec smart fan (35-49 CFM, 23-32 dBA, 1410-2280 RPM)and the 92mm Vantec Stealth fans (28 cfm, 20 dBA, 1750 RPM), as well as the 92mm Vantex aeroflow(34.8 to 58.5 CFM, 29 to 40 DB Noise , 1850 to 3100 RPM), although the last one is a bit louder than I would like. Remember that the whole point of this is to make the PC quiet while maintaining an OEM level of cooling performance.

Thanks! -- Paul

I got my 1.1 tualatin running totally passive, stable at 34 celsius... with a 12 db pabst on it, it holds 29 celsius. That using the stock heatsink.

So as long as you don't OC, switch off the fans, and keep an eye on the temp. Should it go too high, try a bigger heatsink.

Cheers, Flixotide

Hmm, thanks for the tip.

Alas, this will be coppermine, so it'll run a bit hotter, and the fan will be maybe 6 inches from the HS, so I'll probably need a bit more airflow than that ....

But I do agree that it has a good chance of working, so long as we keep an eye on the temps.

Thanks for your response!! -- Paul

u dont really need a fan, as a rule of thumb, keep the temps below 55C and you will not experiance any problems, above that and up to 80C u will shorten the life of the processor.

best thing to do is use a thermal switch on a fan which close (creating a circuit at a given temprature - say 50C)

One more note... I have an 800 Mhz P3 coppermine running passive at 48 celsius.. no problem... EDIT: using stock heatsink!!!

So your 800 celeron should do just fine with heatsink only..

Cheers, Flixotide

macklin01 said:

Hello!

I have an idea for my wife's HP celeron 800 for nearly-passive cooling.... ....Like many OEM PC's....

Click to expand...

Have you looked into trying to undervolt the chip? I assume it's impossible with a pre-made system but you may get lucky. And if you can run the system stable a .1 -.2 v less than normal that'll take a bite out of your heat. Maybe not alot but every bit helps. And it'll spare the 8.5watt power supply those things usually come with a bit of effort too.

Re: Re: Nearly-passive celeron cooling.

eobard said:

Have you looked into trying to undervolt the chip? I assume it's impossible with a pre-made system but you may get lucky. And if you can run the system stable a .1 -.2 v less than normal that'll take a bite out of your heat. Maybe not alot but every bit helps. And it'll spare the 8.5watt power supply those things usually come with a bit of effort too.

Click to expand...

Thanks -- ordinarily, that would be a great idea. (Actually, I believe that my mobo is slightly undervolting my PIII-S, so it must be helping there.) Alas, as an OEM board, there are no such BIOS options. Actually, the whole reason I'm entertaining this cooling method is that the OEM board has capacitors too close to the socket to replace the HS with anything near standard. We tried to use a stock PIII cooler, but its heatsink ran into the capacitors. Talk about violating the no-build zones!

Thanks for the advice!

And others: Thanks for the encouragement. I think we will give it a try as soon as I build a thermometer to measure the temps. (The OEM board strikes again: no thermal monitoring. )

Thanks again! -- Paul