Arctic cooler any good?

[Keranthor]

Hi all,

I am building a htpc which will use a celeron 400 CPU. In searching for a decent heatsink I narrowed it down to these two according to reviews, availability and price.

Arctic cooler silent copper

Thermaltake Volcano 9

Now the arctic cooler has a fan rated at 20db, all reviews say you cannot hear the thing. Anyone have any experience with this?

The thermaltake can be speed regulated, they claim to 13db. Anyone have a comment on this.

Price wise they are the same, which one will be the least noisiest. This will be installed in a coolermaster 620 Housing with a silenx 300Watt 14db PSU (ordered this morning) and a Seagate baracuda 5 80Gb HDD.

If anyone has a comment please feel free, I want this to be right first time.

I will also upgrade my normal pc to a Cooler master Aero 7, the htpc motherboard however cannot accommodate the size of the aero (2mm too short around the socket). Reviews are very good about the Aero.

Best regards
Marc

[counterpt]

I only know about the thermaltake voacano 9.
My biased opinion is to stay away from it. I regret getting mine, I got rid of it.
Even at the lowest rpm, the fan makes clicking/vibrating noise.
Even if you put a different fan in there the design of the cooler is not good so the temps are bad unless you have high airflow.
13db, yeah right, don't belive that.
Actually at this point I don't believe any manufacturers db numbers. They don't all measure it the same way. I wonder how far you have to be to measure it to be 13db.
I'd say browse/search here and look at what people here like.
I searched here and I found this:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/modules.p ... =48&page=1
Hope this helps

[Keranthor]

Thanks, the Arctic cooler it is then.

Regards
Marc

[MikeC]

A Celeron 400? What form factor? Is this an old one or one of the super low voltage ones released last year?

If the Arctic Cooler fits, it will be perfectly good.