Socket A cooling on the cheap?

[matt_garman]

After all the time and money I spent trying to make my computers as quiet as possible, my roommate's computer ends up in the office of my house... and he's not an SPRC reader.

Since he doesn't care about PC noise, I volunteered to quiet his computer---but I want to keep the cost down! I'm thinking about buying the Evercase 4252 case; I've got a Fortron FSP350-PN laying around, but I'm not sure what to do about the CPU cooling.

I haven't had his computer apart yet, so I don't know exactly what he has (hopefully I'll get around to that later today). But I do know it's an Athlon; I'm guessing it's around 1 GHz or so. I'm also not sure what motherboard he has.

Anyway, point is, I'd like to get a quiet CPU cooler cheaply. Ideally, I'd just throw in a Zalman 7000, but those cost too much. I browsed through some posts around here, the following two HSFs look like possible candidates:

• Arctic Cooling CPU Cooler For AMD Athlon Socket 462 up to 3400+, Model "Copper Silent 2M" -RETAIL
• Spire WhisperRock IV CPU Cooler For Socket A / 370, AMD Recommended, Model "SPA04B4" -RETAIL

Another one that looked promising is the ALPHA PAL6035MFC Heat Sink. I have some extra Panaflo L1A's laying around, so all I really need is a good heat sink.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!
Matt

[SebRad]

Hi, I've had a little experience with an Arctic Cooling Copper Silent 2. (The plain version, no temp control or LEDs). My impressions were good. The clip is very easy to fit/remove and has a loop that the screw driver fits in to so it can't slip out. The performance seamed good too, on an Athlon XP2200 it was fine around 5-7V and as such was pretty quiet. It was in a quiet (rather than silent) PC I built and was really noticeable as a noise source unless it was running at 12V.
I would say for most people it is a very good choice given here in the UK I can get it for £7-8 (Zalman 7000 £30-40). For most of us on SPCR who want the lowest possible noise more sophisticated equipment will be in order, but we're prepared to pay for it too.
Summary: Very good for the money.
Seb

[merlyn]

if its only around 1ghz why not just cable tie a panaflo to the existing heatsink and hard wire it to 5v? i've had a lot of success with this technique even on faster/hotter chips and it needn't cost you a penny. hardwire the psu fan to 5v, make sure the case has decent venting, suspend/isolate the HDD, make sure the NB and GPU are passive...

[Rusty075]

I'll second the recommendations for the Arctic-cooling Copper Silent models.

I'm assuming that your roommate isn't an avid computer tinkerer, so I'd lean towards the "TC" model, with the thermally controlled fan. That would accomplish two things: It will provide a safety factor in case of ambient temp increases, dust clogs, etc. If he's running a CPU that old, he's unlikely to be the type to keep an eye on his temps like "we" are. Secondly, it will help make that PC even quieter during all the time its just sitting there at idle, which is probably most of the time.


The really cheap, closer-to-the-edge, solution that Merlyn proposes works fine for us, but I worry about strapping it onto someone else's PC that isn't as aware of what's going on in there. If summertime comes, and your roomie moves his PC into a cabinet inside his un-airconditioned room, and it bakes, you're likely to get a very angry phone call.

Remember that a 1.2Ghz-ish T-bird is putting out nearly as much heat as an XP3000+ does, yet it often lacks the thermal-shutdown mobo feature, so you do need to be a bit careful.

[POLIST8]

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDe ... 023&depa=0

Nuff said.