Hi there!

Built my first rig in May, a very low-budge but useful thing, and have isolated the noisiest factor to be the stock cooling on the CPU: AMD Athlon 64X2 Brisbane 5050e ADH5050DOBOX

Obviously I'm not in a gamer or enthusiast mode, but a quieter CPU HSF would help my nervous system out quite a bit.

-Oh, the mobo is ASRock A780fullHD 780g MicroATX

and an HEC minitower/585w psu combo

Any recommendations you'd care to share would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for looking, and Happy New Year, all!

For an AMD-based mobo, the Scythe Mugen 2 would be a good choice, as it mounts the 'correct' way facing the rear exhaust fan position (a lot of recommended heatsinks don't on an AMD motherboard) and has a good stock fan.

Otherwise, check out the Recommended CPU heatsink article on the main section of the site.

Thanks, Jamie.

I think I should have clarified my situation.

Temperature seems ok, it's just the noise of the stock HSF that bugs, so I think I can get by replacing just the fan.

Does this seem like a sane course?

And should I be posting in CPU cooling forum? Or Fan forum?

Do you mean something like this but on an AMD cooler?

Should be possible with a little bit of modding and reasonable enough for a low power CPU like yours.

From memory, the AMD fan on their heatsinks is 70mm, so you might be able to buy a 70mm to 80mm fan adapter like this and use a 80mm fan of your choice on the cooler. No guarantees that this adapter would work with your cooler though.

As for fans for this adapter, the Nexus Real Silent 80mm case fan would be one option. The Noctua NF-R8 fan might be another choice, and it comes with speed adapters to allow you to slow down the fan speed to certain levels. The Scythe Kama Flex 80mm fan and the Scythe S-Flex 80mm fan are also other options.

Alternatively, you could do a bit of modding and try strapping a 120mm fan to the heatsink somehow. This might require a bit of ingenuity in securing the fan to the heatsink. As noted in the caption to one of the pictures in the linked article, some wire ties from the struts of the fan might be necessary to secure it to the heatsink somehow, but the stock AMD heatsink doesn't have anything like that once you remove the fan and fan cover from memory.

A Nexus Real Silent 120mm fan (like the one used in the linked article) would be a pretty decent choice if you went down this path. Otherwise, a Scythe Slipstream or Scythe S-Flex 120mm fan would be good too.

You will also have to change your CPU fan speed control method to voltage in your BIOS to get the fan to vary with CPU temperature. Otherwise, you can just set it to a fixed speed that you find quiet using a Zalman Fanmate 2 or something similar.

Best of luck with this!

Thanks for the help, Jaime--yes, it's a 70mm fan, with (apparently) just the 4 screws fastening directly to the fins of the HS.

Even though I built this rig myself I was hoping for less invasive procedures (to borrow medical jargon) than pulling off the mobo to bolt on a new HSF--hence the fan question.

Speaking of which, is a fan a fan? By which I mean, for example, if I buy a 70mm "case" fan to replace my current "HS" fan, the only difference is nomenclature?

My family thinks I'm being too picky about this, but as long as I'm not tearing apart the house or throwing us into bankruptcy I think they'll indulge me.

You shouldn't have to remove the motherboard from your case but you may have to remove the heatsink from the CPU/motherboard - you don't want to accidentally damage the motherboard or CPU when you are messing with the heatsink.

Fans are pretty much fans - however some fans work better than others for CPU heatsinks as static pressure is important as well as airflow for CPU fans.

Oh, and avoid any fans smaller than 80mm, as they tend to be loud and fast.

Finally, have you exhausted your options for controlling the stock fan - there might be some BIOS settings to help your motherboard reduce the fan speed, or even just add a Zalman Fanmate between your heatsink fan and the motherboard and turn the fan down to the point that it barely spins. Just make sure to monitor your CPU temps during normal usage and ensure it doesn't get too hot.

BIOS is the first thing I'll start in with on Tuesday. I'd rather do it that way than the new hardware route.

Thanks again!

OT I know, but ever visit Bali?

Happy to help!

Nope, haven't had the chance to visit.

JamieG, haven't forgotten about this; your advice has been most helpful. I've decided to live with the noise situation for the nonce and installed a fanless Radeon 4350 so we can use this as the primary/HTPC.

I'm the only one in the house that notices the CPU fan anyway.

So it's on the to do list, just shuffled back a bit.

Again, thanks.