Slimline Cooler for old Intel DH57JG motherboard with i3-530

[SamirD]

No real need to overclock or anything, and the stock Intel cooler works great--problem is that its too tall for the 1u rackmount server case I'm putting this together in. Suggestions for a slimline cooler? There's no room on the back of the board for a bracket due to an IC in the way, but I can always circumvent that with a trip to home depot if necessary, although I'd like a plug a play solution best. The socket also has some semi-tall components that might possibly get in the way if the cooler overhangs much.

The one that I think might be the best I've found so far is the Engine 27 by Thermaltake, but before I go out and get it, I wanted to see if I've overlooked anything, hence I'm here to ask the experts.

Feel free to ask questions, and thank you in advance.

 

[maxfly]

i would go with this one personally. top notch quality, easy to mount and only 37mm tall. im not a big fan of thermaltakes hsf offerings. they may have improved their quality issues since i used one but i still dont trust them.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009VCAJ7...uA&pd_rd_r=4DMTQKTPPXHMT1K59EWD&pd_rd_w=dOYxi

 

[SamirD]

i would go with this one personally. top notch quality, easy to mount and only 37mm tall. im not a big fan of thermaltakes hsf offerings. they may have improved their quality issues since i used one but i still dont trust them.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009VCAJ7...uA&pd_rd_r=4DMTQKTPPXHMT1K59EWD&pd_rd_w=dOYxi

I looked into this one as well and that's where I got the idea of just getting some nuts for mounting if there's a bracket. Unfortunately, according to the answer Noctua gave in the amazon product faq, it will not work for a 1u case, and measuring what another user mentioned is the distance off the chip (about 1.5"), it won't.

Any other ideas?

 

[Lochekey]

Do you have a measurement on the max height cooler your case will accept?

 

[SamirD]

Do you have a measurement on the max height cooler your case will accept?

Eyeballing it I would say max from the cpu to touching the cover of the case will be 1.5" or about 38mm. I'll get a precise measurement to confirm that.

 

[don256us]

I think that this is the cooler you're talking about right?
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835106417

How else are you taking care of heat? This thing will whip heat 360 degrees and should probably be channeled by other case fans. It seems to me that most 1U cases are designed so that there is a fan blowing from the front to the back. Then the CPU has fins only that are in line front to back. The fan blows past the fins on the way out. Delta fans are not uncommon but boy are they loud. In a situation like this, you really should think about a full case plan.

Will the CPU e at high utilization? Will the case be in a hot or cold environment? Will there be equipment above/below it in a rack? If so, what type of equipment? Other computers?

 

[SamirD]

I think that this is the cooler you're talking about right?
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835106417

How else are you taking care of heat? This thing will whip heat 360 degrees and should probably be channeled by other case fans. It seems to me that most 1U cases are designed so that there is a fan blowing from the front to the back. Then the CPU has fins only that are in line front to back. The fan blows past the fins on the way out. Delta fans are not uncommon but boy are they loud. In a situation like this, you really should think about a full case plan.

Will the CPU e at high utilization? Will the case be in a hot or cold environment? Will there be equipment above/below it in a rack? If so, what type of equipment? Other computers?

Yep, that's the one. In preliminary testing with the stock Intel cooler and the small case fans floored, the heatsink wasn't even warm. I plan to just floor the fans to prevent any heat buildup at all. Fan noise doesn't bother me at all since these are remote to me, that's not even an issue.

Not high cpu utilization at all. Controlled environment with all the other equipment. Possibly in a rack, but just stacked on top of other rack equipment otherwise. More servers that put out much more heat than this guy.

The case is quite roomy even with a hard drive and gpu so I think as long as the fans are all blowing hard, the air will find its way out for sure. I just don't know if any of these lower profile coolers will clear some of the components on the board nearby the cpu socket.

 

[don256us]

I did not vette this for your setup but this is representative of what you will find on most CPUs in a 1u case.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...VHJ7ACh0WFww8EAQYAiABEgJJpfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

There should be 2-3 fans at the front of the case blowing are towards the back and across the CPU. There should be another set of fans at the back of the case pulling air from the front and exhausting out the back. No need to worry about the fins clearing as they will just cover the CPU socket footprint. The case itself will act as a wind tunnel.

Here is a link to a Supermicro SC514-441 for reference only. Note that there is a bank of delta fans at the front pushing air across the CPU fins and RAM and PSU in this case. Also note that the RAM and the fins are alligned front to back.
http://www.wiredzone.com/supermicro...ver-chassis-1u-rackmount-cse-514-441-10024073

 

[SamirD]

I did not vette this for your setup but this is representative of what you will find on most CPUs in a 1u case.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...VHJ7ACh0WFww8EAQYAiABEgJJpfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

There should be 2-3 fans at the front of the case blowing are towards the back and across the CPU. There should be another set of fans at the back of the case pulling air from the front and exhausting out the back. No need to worry about the fins clearing as they will just cover the CPU socket footprint. The case itself will act as a wind tunnel.

Here is a link to a Supermicro SC514-441 for reference only. Note that there is a bank of delta fans at the front pushing air across the CPU fins and RAM and PSU in this case. Also note that the RAM and the fins are alligned front to back.
http://www.wiredzone.com/supermicro...ver-chassis-1u-rackmount-cse-514-441-10024073

Thank you for the link to that nice copper heatsink. I had no idea you could buy those separately.

I have several othe servers so I know exactly what you're talking about. However, this is a oddball 1u design with no rear fans and just 2 small intake fans--not a major problem since there won't be much heat generated, but there would need to be a traditional heatsink/fan setup on the cpu to keep it cool--just one that needs to be short enough to fit in the 1u case.

 

[SamirD]

So I didn't have time to carefully examine each of the 3 coolers at microcenter that might fit, so I bought all 3 including the Thermaltake Engine 27.

Each of them had their issues. One wouldn't fit because it was completely hitting something, so that one was out.

Another almost fit perfectly, but a heat pipe was contacting a capacitor and I know over time that was not going to be good. It was this Evercool model:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...VQx2BCh1UJA16EAQYASABEgI18fD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

The Thermaltake fit, but required its bracket that when put on the motherboard, caused the motherboard to not be able to mount in the case. I tried using some other parts to just mount the Thermaltake by itself, but I didn't like how much stress was being put on the motherboard.

I think the Dynatron k2 might be ideal and not hit anything:
https://www.dynatron.co/product-page/k2

 

[SamirD]

So I just tried the Dynatron k2 tonight and even after making sure there was good contact between the cooler and the chip, nothing in the way, good paste contact, the temps shot up about 25c higher than the stock cooler, approaching 70c where I then shut it off. I checked the cooler, the chip, the board, the cooler mount, the paste, and as a final test, put the stock cooler back in. Sure enough, with the stock cooler, it never went higher than 48c.

I just watch everything from the bios since it has an option to monitor fan speeds, voltage and temps. CPU fan rpms were correct and I heard and saw it running. I had set the cpu fans to be not monitored in the bios as this seems to keep them floored (I like fan noise vs high temps).

Really dumbfounded as this cooler is a nice solid chunk of copper with a nice build quality and the fan was spinning at ~1100 rpm. Bad cooler? Bad setup? Bad install? Any thoughts appreciated.

 

[maxfly]

most blower style fans just dont have very good cooling capabilities. long ago i tested one as an exhaust pci fan(to help gpu temps). it was useless. it moved a tiny bit of air but not nearly as much as i had been led to believe it would. if you dont return it i would bet a 80 or 92mm high rpm fan blowing down onto the cpu would improve the cooling quite a bit. maybe the stock cooler is the best option in this case.

 

[SamirD]

most blower style fans just dont have very good cooling capabilities. long ago i tested one as an exhaust pci fan(to help gpu temps). it was useless. it moved a tiny bit of air but not nearly as much as i had been led to believe it would. if you dont return it i would bet a 80 or 92mm high rpm fan blowing down onto the cpu would improve the cooling quite a bit. maybe the stock cooler is the best option in this case.

Yeah, blower fans do have their drawbacks for sure. Unfortunately, it's been the only cooler that allows my 1u build to happen. I just can't figure that it's that far off the mark because the tdp it was designed for matches the cpu perfectly. On paper, this should have been perfect.

 

[SamirD]

So after setting this aside as I had to travel for work, I revisited it this morning.

The first thing I tried was checking the fan control in the bios--that didn't help. In any mode, the cpu fan was still not moving enough air.

Then, I finally did a physical hack like I recently did to a Dell Optiplex 755 to make the fan floored--just pushed out the pin contact for PWM from the header. And this worked. The cpu fan is now spinning at over 4k rpm and the cpu temps are a steady 44-45c at idle. But the big question is why I had to do this? Wouldn't the system know to increase the fan speed as the temps rose?