Is it worth considering a fanless CPU cooler?

[elsmandino]

I am in the process of trying to quieten my headless Linux server at the moment and am considering an aftermarket cooler.

The server is left on 24/7 and I can hear the stock fan ram up occasionally.

Specs are not particularly hardcore:

G1840
MSI B85M-E45 m-ATX
12GB DDR3 (2x4GB and 2x2GB)
1x64GB Crucial M4 SSD
2 x 2TB Samsung F4 HDD
1 x 1TB Samsung F1 HDD
1 x 6TB WD Red HDD
Superflower Golden Green 350w PSU (Gold Rating)
Xigmatek Midgard Tower with 1 x 120mm exhaust fan and 1 x 140mm intake fan

Do you think I could get away with a completely passive CPU cooler or should I go for something with a bit but quiet fan?

[Abula]

The G1840 will not generate that much heat, im cooling a i7 4770k with a fanless cooler (but with fans on the case), so you can defently cool your G1840 with a fanless cooler, weather its worth it or not its up to you, once you introduce fans to your setup the gains of a totally fansless cooler is very little, to me it would be better a big cooler with a very low rpm fan on it, for example a big overkill for G1840 would be something like Thermalright Macho RevB, its way more than you need, but you also guarantee that you can probably have it run 300rpms on idle and maybe around 500rpms on load and still be fine.

[Wild Penguin]

A fan (at low RPM) is better than no fan at all. A proper fan at low RPM is also very quiet or inaudible.

For anything running 24/7 I'd not run it passively (unless your components are engineered to be run passively). But that CPU and MB is not meant to be run passively. It's not just about the CPU, also the MB and it's components are going to need some convection.

In case you have a PSU or case with fans in them, using a CPU cooler without fans will gain little. This is (partially)because: two fans moving the same amount of air than a single fan will be quieter; in other words, for a given cooling task, more fans will be quieter than less fans!

There can be special cases; for example the Antec Fusion (and the related case) have the side fans so close to a matching CPU heatsink that they essentially work as CPU heat sink fans at the same time (as they are circulating air inside the case). But that case doesn't count as passive CPU cooler!

[Derek Semeraro]

I think a CPU Cooler with a fan at the slowest speed, all things considered, is better than no fan at all.

Numerous builds with fans have still been deemed silent by SPCR's standards.