What is the best fanless/extreme low airflow cooler now?

wwenze · Post by **wwenze** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 1:24 am

Still Scythe Ninja? Or Orochi? Or other tower coolers?

Extreme low airflow meaning no fan mounted on the cooler, some chassis exhaust fan if the CPU's lucky, else only airflow from the PSU's fan.

maalitehdas · Post by **maalitehdas** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 1:55 am

That would be an interesting review if someone tested several bigr CPU heatsinks without their fans and report the CPU temps with each. I would guess someone has done this, does anyone know any links? I'm using Scythe Ninja without it's fan and without case fans, E8400@1,8GHz full load gives 69 degrees (C). Stress test result after 2h, ambient temp 21C.

Bierfuizl · Post by **Bierfuizl** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 4:04 am

I'm using the Orochi for my Athlon x2 4400 and it's probably your best bet when it comes to full passive mode. My case has zero fans and load temps are below 50Â°C. Idle is barely above 30Â°C at normal room temperatures.

Here are some benchmarks (in German, have a look at "Passivvergleich"):

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hard ... iganten/4/

http://eiskaltmacher.de/portal/index.ph ... mitstart=4

Parappaman · Post by **Parappaman** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 4:42 am

There's the Noctua D14, which is so much better than anything else.

PlanetOfTheApes · Post by **PlanetOfTheApes** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 5:28 am

Test A: Fanless open stand i7-920 3Ghz @ 1.03v results:

Test A

Cooler Master Z600 (=92.2 degC) vs Noctua NH-D14 (=86.2 degC)

Test B: Fanless open stand Q6600 2.8Ghz @ 1.18v results:

Test B

Orochi (=79.5 degC) vs Z600 (=81 degC)

Conclusion: If you the believe their results, it looks like the NH-D14 is equal to or better than the Orochi. However, I'd only care about the "fanless open stand" results if I were building a zero fan system.

maalitehdas · Post by **maalitehdas** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 5:07 pm

Bierfuizl wrote:I'm using the Orochi for my Athlon x2 4400 and it's probably your best bet when it comes to full passive mode. My case has zero fans and load temps are below 50Â°C. Idle is barely above 30Â°C at normal room temperatures.

Here are some benchmarks (in German, have a look at "Passivvergleich"):

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hard ... iganten/4/

http://eiskaltmacher.de/portal/index.ph ... mitstart=4

Thanks for the links. You have the x2 4400+ EE version i suppose?

Bierfuizl · Post by **Bierfuizl** » Wed Feb 24, 2010 7:05 am

Actually it's the normal edition. I got really lucky, that beast undervolts down all the way. Full load with 1.05V, idle goes down to 0.7V

. I'm using CrystalCPUID so idle is 0.775V in day to day use as Crystal doesn't go lower than that (and only with a small trick). But idle difference at that voltage is <1W so not really worth the hassle.

Small correction: Just checked, it's a Athlon64 X2 4200+ and I got it for 33â‚¬ (Jan 09).

OddSilence · Post by **OddSilence** » Thu Feb 25, 2010 9:59 am

I would never put an Orochi in a vertical mounted motherboard, but i might on a horizontal one, and incidentally i am building a horiz soon...

But i wonder, would Orochi's >1Kg weight still be bad for the motherboard's and even CPU's "health" (even being horizontal) ?
Is there any specification online stating a maximum weight to be exerced on a motherboard?

ces · Post by **ces** » Thu Feb 25, 2010 5:07 pm

The only real passive heatsinks, designed to be so, are:
Scythe Orochi
Scythe Ninja
Thermalright HR-01 plus

As best I can tell from the testing out there is that the Thermalright HR-01 plus is the best passive cooler of the three.

The Orochi looks impressive, but doesn't seem to perform commensurate with its size.

For a light 500rpm fan. the Prolimatech seems to match the Thermalright HR-01 plus. As fan speed increases, the Prolimatech clearly pulls away from and and out performs the others. But with no fan, the Thermalright HR-01 plus clearly outperforms the Prolimatech.

The Thermalright HR-01 plus actually doesn't do badly with a strong fan either. Its still in the same league as the Prolimatech with higher RPM fans.