Have been working on silent computing for quite some time now. Mostly fanless.

Our best model this far can be viewed here

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It uses a 45 W athlon, and is of dimensions 30x28x10 cm. While under stress CPU-temp lands at around 55 C. Due to space constraints only a slimline dvd and a tv-card are included in the box (except for the obvious stuff). Cooling is achieved by transfering heat to the cooling wall.

This one works best when oriented vertically, in some cases this is not practical, and in this design



that constraint is not present. This box has dimensions 38x28x5 cm (i.e. considerably thinner, but due to the forced flow, the cooling structure can be made smaller), and here cooling is achieved by one 8 cm Nexus fan, 1500 rpm (inlet seen in picture), temperatures are about the same as the fanless.Obviously this one is not as quiet as the fanless design, but in most cases it is quiet enough. This one is not the most polished of designs (the two cables at the front is the on/off button...).

Regards,

/jon

Looks interesting! But it's kind of hard to see from the pictures, exactly what is going on there. So the entire side is basically a heat sink connected to the CPU/GPU??

Yes it looks very interesting, especially the first one. Some more pictures and details would be great!

The cpu is connected to the side wall. It is connected via a solid piece of aluminum (in the same way as has been described on this forum before). Have no dedicated gpu on this one, only using the one included on the mainboard - so neither of these rigs are suitable for serious gaming.

/j

Your first model is about half the size of a HFX-mini. That is impressive.

Regarding the second one, is it just one fan in the system? So there is no fan explicitly cooling the CPU?

That is right, only one fan in the system, a 1500 rpm Nexus. I wanted to make the box as thin as possible, and I soon realized that it would be difficult if I were to use a heat sink and fan on the CPU (even if it were a low profile one).

Instead there is one fan pulling air into the box (haven't tried, but I'm pretty sure it would work if were to push air out instead), and basically a part of the interior of the box is working as a heat sink for the cpu.

What kind of CPU are you using, and how much power is it using?

Great build!

I'm very curious to know more about the the transfer mechanism to the cooling wall. I can think of a few ways it might be achieved, but I'm wondering how involved (read: expensive) the method is here.

Regardless, that's genius. I can think of a lot of people (myself included) who'd enjoy a PC with those specs in that footprint. That leads to another question: will it work with the new 45W quad?

Is this ur personal system, or a customers?

The method is really simple. CPU is connected to the cooling wall by a piece of solid aluminum, about 4 cm high. And the "cooling wall" is actually a channel, made of two plates of aluminum. That is, there are no fins or anything (which would have made it more complicated). I have done tests, and have found that the channel is quite an efficient way to remove the heat. So the material needed is really inexpensive, but of course one has to think a bit about the placement of HD, dvd, and tv-card (here a riser card is needed).

The cpu in this case draws about 45 W, so a new quad would be no problem (we have made similar systems with 65 W CPUs, and that is no problem, one just have to make the channel slightly bigger). There are some issues about dimensions of the channel, the optimal width of the channel is related to the other dimensions of the channel.

The first one I actually sold to a friend. The second one was the result of an inquiry of a firm needing a silent "appliance computer" (and they didn't want to be restricted to a vertical placement of the computer). But since it is a prototype and since I need a new media computer anyway I'm going to use it as a HTPC system at home.