I recently (as an experiment) ripped the final fans out of my HTPC. It now has no fans. At all.
silverstone fanless psu
Zalman cpu cooler with the fan disconnected.
No case fans.
E6600
A couple of gigs of ram.
Passive Ati X300
Creative live card
3x250Gb hd's in silent drive enclosures (one laptop hd as the system drive)
In a Zalman 160 case.
Cpu throttles back to 1.8ghz from a stock 2.4 under long periods of high load but otherwise the system seems just fine.
Anyone else tried zero fans with standard components?
Opinions?

Welcome to SPCR!

Which Zalman CPU HS are you using? What are your ambient temperatures?

(BTW, are you going to post pictures, or should this thread be moved?)

Yes I tried it, and no it didn't work (Zalman 8000 on various AM2 CPUs, eg. Sempron 3200+ and X2 3600+). This was in an LC-11 which probably makes life more difficult 'cos the motherboard is flipped and there's no vent slots in the top of the case.

To be frank I don't think it's worth the effort with my case/heatsink. The CPU fan (Nexus 80mm) is the only fan in the box, and it's utterly inaudible with the lid of the case off.

I'll post some picturess and measure the temps.
BIOS was telling me that I was getting 63C cpu temp on reboot following a decent period of use.
Room tempature is usually somewhere around 20C

63C at idle after a reboot suggests its getting pretty warm in there. Monitor the temps in windows when under typical HTPC workloads.

OK so I've been checking the room tempature this evening and it has varied in the range 22C - 24C. This is pretty typical I guess (I don't usually check).

The CPU cooler is a CNPS 9500 (the one that looks like a turbine). I would have it plugged in as at low speed it is pretty inaudible, but I recently swapped my Gigabyte mainboard with my brother for an Asrock (he needed more memory support). The fan speed control on the Asrock didn't seem to work and always ran the fan fast. So I disconnected it.

It was a little later that I decided to take out the case fans.

The sound card is an X-fi (of course) not the live card - my error.
Anyway: will take some pics when I find the charger for my camera.

Haven't used any cpu / mainboard temp monitoring software in years so suggestions would be welcome and I'll get those temps.

Have run this machine playing DVD's (all my own are ripped to the hard drive), DivX's, some 720p trailers, music etc (The HTPC is what I use for all this stuff - I don't own a standalone DVD player anymore), over good long evenings / nights without any issues. (I just got a new panasonic plasma last weekend and we watched a bunch of movies to test it .

I will admit that I did nearly expect it to either shut down or crash at some point but it's just working away fine instead.

IMO, there is no reason to risk running a computer without fans. High quality, low speed fans with fan control are inaudible and cool MUCH more effectively than a passive setup. Even though this is SILENT PC review you will find very few veterans that actually run passive computers. We have all experimented with them, but rarely do we recommend them.

I'm not a "fan" of the prospect. (groans please) The advantage of running your pc components at lower temperatures greatly outweighs the "minus" of having fans in a system. Thing is that the fans tend to be quieter than any hard drive these days, therefore the fan is completely inaudible.

I agree that running with no fans is potentially undesireable.
If the fan speed controller on the mainboard actually worked I would use the CPU fan but that's about it.
I'm going to run this system fanless for the forseeable future. If there are any issues with it I'll let you know

I do run a completely fanless system.

E2160 underclocked 1.4Ghz@0.85V, stock heatsink without the fan.
Gigabyte DS2 G33 mATX mobo with integrated graphics
2 sticks of ram
WD GP 500Gb harddrive
Antec minuet. Originally had a fan in the PSU which i removed.

Temperatures: System (dont know exactly where the termistor is located) 35C idle, 50C 2x mprime
Processor: 50C idle, 65C 2x mprime.
Harddrive: 50-55C

Temps read through lm-sensors and hddtemp.

The case has ventilation holes on the side and the top which i guess generate enough airflow by the heat itself due to the stack effect.

Alpha60. It is a great engineering accomplishment for you to run your system fanless however it only highlights how pointless the whole exercise is.

My system is faster, cooler and probably quieter than yours would be.

I dare say that the hard drive is running way too hot to the point where reliability may be reduced. My hard drive runs in the low 30's at idle and high 30's after it's done some work. I have the exact same hdd as you. The only conclusion i can come to is that your case is running way too hot. I would suggest that you reconsider your rig.

I have enclosed my hard disk in the scythe silent drive put it on some rubber things at the bottom of my case and it is still the loudest part of my system. (despite being the quietest desktop drive i have heard).

I have come to the conclusion that a little airflow is A LOT better than no airflow. Until SSD drives are affordable there is no practical reason to run pc's fanless.

I was contemplating on disconnecting the fan on my CNPS9500AT. My processor is an E6550. Did you just disconnect the fan? Or did you completely take the fan off from the HSF? I was wondering if I should remove the fan off or if I should just disconnect it.

Thanks,

-Josef

I think you mean when.
Seriously though. What you're doing is not unreasonable IF replacing your mobo, CPU and HHD frequently is part of your equation. If you're hoping to get 3 years or so from your rig, what you're doing is probably a very bad idea. Depending on how hard you push it, you may not even get a year.

I'd also like to echo my 'colleagues' here, hard drives are simply louder than good, undervolted fans. YOu're much better off investing your efforts and funds in quiet hard drives than just turning off the fans and hoping nothing melts.

OK, so I guess many of you will start looking at faness setups when solid state memory are are going to be used instead of hard drives?

Have been running fanless for many years now, and while it is true that HD is "noiisy" there is absolutely no drawback in running fanless IF system is giving you the performance you need (and keeps the components at adequately low temps). You are even saving some energy (a few watts/fan?).

But then again, it takes some thinking to build a system which is good enough...

My system will run without fans, but i cant hear the fans that i have running in there, so why not just leave them on? I mean if you cant hear a difference, at least with them on you have peace of mind.

I have 3 fans in my system including the one in the PSU. The one in the PSU never ramps up at all, ever. The other two are a 120mm 1200 sflex running at 6v and a 92mm nexus running at 6v.

I have a hard time hearing the fans even with the top/side case panels off, and with them on i have to put my ear right up against the metal to hear them, and even then i think what im hearing is more vibration than actual sound waves.

running fanless is pointless. In my HTPC I only have one 120mm fan at 750RPM running and everything is cool. CPU gets to 40 degrees under load, HDD at 30s. Room temp 20 degrees.

As a comparison, when I tried fanless. CPU 50+, HDD 40+.

Turning of the fans, yes, probably not a good idea. But that doesn't justify the claim that "fanless is pointless". In a cleverly designed fanless it is possible to land on the same temperatures as you get with fans.

On my asrock board the Quiet Fan option in the BIOS setup does nothing, but if you run something like Speedfan you can controll the fan speed anyway. So if you're using Windows, just install Speedfan and see if it works, its quite likely it will, in my opinion

There are a whole lot of people who think that spending money on making your computer quieter is "pointless", congratulations on lumping yourself in with them. Perhaps you would feel more at home here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ ?

I run a fanless HTPC with an enclosed suspended 2.5" hard drive because I have yet to come across a fan that is inaudible in my room at night. My main rig is louder as I can tolerate the noise while gaming and the noise floor is higher. You are lucky in that you have a high noise floor, or that your hearing is so damaged that you can't hear a 120mm fan spinning at 750rpm, but there is no need to belittle those less fortunate than yourself.

I wished I had known that 2 months earlier. Funnily, the WD320AAKS is considered quiet, no?

Is that so. Then please share with us
No really it's almost imposible to have same temps without fans as you would have with some fans running. Nor is it economical. Ther are some cases (zalman) that have heatpipes to remove the heat but the cost is way too high for my walet anyways
And how about voltage converters and other components on the mobo ? I would guess that originals poster's system will die this summer if he does not put in some fans in there.
Psu needs to have some airflow since hot air tends to get trapped and heat will just keep building up.

Fanless? Just remove all your fans and keep your fingers crossed. With low-end components and enough vent holes in your case, combined with a Ninja you might last a long time.... maybe not.

Here's the only setup I ever made I would even consider running fanless. It's the 1ghz VIA board in my dual Lian Li project. Draws 20W max. The airflow in the case is purely convection when this board is running by itself. The heatsink fins are oriented vertical.....with the laptop HD benefiting from some minor convection airflow. Without the 80x15mm fan running at 4V, the CPU maxes about 38C, with the HD about 40C. (about 26C ambient).

But with the fan installed, running at a fixed 4V, the CPU maxes about 31C, with the HD about 33C. And since the Fan is inaudible @4V, the HD is all you can hear..... so what good would it do to run fanless?

no need to hammer everyone on the head with it, yes it doesn't take a genius to realise forced cooling, even at very low levels, outperforms convection-only cooling.

but can we please desist with the "fanless is pointless/stupid/expensive/impossible" (delete as appropriate) posts, especially from people who have never run anything fanless in their lives.

take the Zalman TNN cases for example. yes, they are expensive and ugly. but you don't need a TNN case to go fanless, just a well-designed HTPC case with some light modding (ATX tower cases require too much modding to work with fanless).

for the psu, ST30NF/ST45NF or picoPSU are designed to run fanless. yes, they might be slightly more expensive than the best fanned PSUs but factor in the savings of not having to buy a couple of top fans like Slipstream or S-Flex and the price gap is not so big.

jaganath.... the point here is that when you are trying to run the quietest possible setup, you can reach a point where the fans are no longer the loudest thing in the computer. At that time you need to reduce the noise from the loudest component...... if you're trying for the quietest setup, rather than a setup without fans.

That VIA setup needs a different HD solution to become any quieter, not a fan removal.

I have never got that idea that your system is as loud as it's loudest component. I have three noctuas running 2 x 5v and 1 x 7v. If i turn of one of the 5v fans i can hear the difference.

And what comes to fanless systems. My last system had only one soft mounted s-flex 1200 running at 5v and i sill can hear it. So I would have been glad I if could go fanless.

CyberDog...... I agree that if you use intake or exhaust fans, they are always audible from close-up no matter how slow they are running.

But that VIA setup has neither...... the only fan is simply blowing at the board, and is inside a heavy case with sound dampening. The fan is about 15" from any opening and inaudible to me. If I put my ear to the upper exhaust opening, I can hear the WD drive..... that's it.

Much of your perception of quiet is determined by your environment. I had an office computer with a Zalman flower at 7V (not a very quiet machine in my house) that was totally inaudible in the office because I was near a street with some traffic. If you live in the middle of rural Canada in a concrete minuteman bunker, then maybe you CAN hear a recommended fan at 5V, but for many of us it makes no sense to get any quieter than a couple of Nexus fans at 5V, which cool much better than pure passive convection. If you want to go fanless, go ahead, but don't come back yelling at us when you new motherboard caps blow up because we don't recommend it.

Bluefront... My fan was in PSU and the computer is on the floor about one meter from my ear behind desks drawers...

But as autoboy said it is much about the ambient noise...