CA_Steve wrote:
There may not be enough mass to conduct the heat away in these tiny coolers to run passive. The good news is the Scythe Kozuti was only 12 dBA in SPCR testing with a 95W TDP CPU at 65C. Your CPU should be a piece of cake.
Thanks for the welcome! Great forum, by the way.
I believe you. What gets me is that on 10 watt Atom CPUs, they have these tiny passive coolers. I theorized that on a 25 watt (or 20 watts underclocked down to around 1600 MHz) CPU, I'd only need about twice the metal in the Atom heatsink. Unfortunately, it appears that I may need about four times that.

There's probably some element that I'm not accounting for. This is really confusing, though. It would seem that underclocking does not reduce power consumption in as dramatic a fashion as one might imagine.
I'm starting to lean toward the Kozuti - thanks for the suggestion!

Abula wrote:
Well the NoFan CR-95C Copper Fanless CPU Cooler probably can, but im guessing you want on the small factor for your small case, i dont think there is one. You could move into something like HDPLEX H3.SODD Fanless Mini-ITX HTPC Case that should allow you to passively cool the with the case itself.
Those are super awesome! HDPLEX is a bit large for my needs, unfortunately. I'm trying for the VESA mountable build, rather than the set top box. But that would definitely be my first choice for a home media center.
I've been trying to get back in contact with a German seller of a case called
Star Metronic. They're not yet ready to sell in the states, although the owner briefly offered to sell to me before they went public. Unfortunately, I have not yet heard back from him, but it was the perfect case.

So close! Hopefully he gets back to me.
There was also the Nimbus, but they're not yet ready to sell in the states, either.

All the best stuff is Austrian, German or Japanese.