Hello, this is my first post in this forum,

I have just bought a second-hand Thermaltake DH101 HTPC case and would like to start filling it.

Either I will use an Athlon II X4 631 (or the newer 651) or I will try and get a used i7 2600k off an ebay equivalent site. So I don't know yet what socket MB (FM1 or 1155/1156) I will have.

Thermaltake's website states that the CPU cooler can have a maximum height of 100mm / 3.6".

It should be near-silent, low-priced and ideally fit the above-mentioned MBs.

I found the list of advised heatsinks on this site, but it seems a little out of date.

Any advice?

This this page over at frostytech has a bunch of low profile heatsinks and very good reviews.

http://www.frostytech.com/top5_lowprofile_heatsinks.cfm

Good place to start.

http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/cpu/0 ... etail.html

As others have reported, a i5k with moderate OC will go ok. I7k with OC is questionable, imho.

Hello & thanks for your replies and links.

I think in a choice between shuriken and big shuriken 2, I would take the big shuriken, as the price difference here is only 7 CHF (6 €). However for nearly the same price as the Big shuriken, I could get a second-hand Noctua NH-C12P. at 112mm height, I guess It will be pushing it with this case, so I am wondering if anybody knows the absolute (unoffiial) max height is in a dh-101 case? Or alternatively, does using a slim fan with the NH-C12P make any sense? If yes, a scythe slipstream, or something else?

Getting this PC together is taking longer than I had hoped. I am getting there, but it is becoming somewhat enstranged from the original idea and will probably look a bit retro to most of you.

I've been hunting on the equivalent of ebay in Switzerland and now have the follwing hardware (trash to some of you, I guess):

Abit iP35 ATX Mainboard
P35T-FB (OEM) µBTX Mainboard
C2Q Q6600 CPU
OCZ / 2x 2 GB / Dual Channel / 4 GB / PC2 6400 / 4-4-4 RAM
2x 1GB ???? PC2 6400 RAM
1x Digital TV Card
1x Analog TV Card
1x be quiet! Pure Power 350W ATX PSU
1x FSP 400-60HLN BTX? PSU
1x Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB WD5000AADS
1x Seagate Baracuda 250GB
2x Noctua NF-P12 Fans
1x Nvidia N1996 Chipset (Probably MSI Nividia Geforce 7600 gt) GPU

As you can see I have had quite a shopping spree

The BTX stuff comes from a Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo, I guess I will look around for another LGA775 CPU and finish with 2 PCs.

Which still leaves me with the heatsink issue (see top), wondering which PSU is better (will a BTX PSU even work with an ATX Board?), and trying to find a good-value GPU that isnt quite as retro as the 7600 gt.

Thanks again for your help so far and as before - advice would be very appreciated.

Don't forget, unless you use a heatsink with an under hung fan, you are going to need about 25mm of breathing room on top of any downdraft heatsink. That sort of limits you to

Noctua NH-L12
Prolimatech Samuel 17
Scythe Big Shurekin

The Noctua NH-L12 with a Nexus 120mm fan stuffed underneath as an underfan may be your best hope for overclocking.

But you need to watch your clearances with respect to the the video card.

Thanks for the reply,

I have read on a German site of someone who claims to have got an Arctic Freezer 7 (120mm height) into a dh101. But there was no picture and I am also not sure how many versions of the freezer 7 there have been (maybe some are <120mm?).

There is a ventilation grid along the back of the case lid. The CPU is more or less below this grid. The holes aren't too big, but I was hoping that I could get quite close to this grid with a top-down heatsink and that it would draw air from outside the case. Do you think I could forego the 25mm clearance in this case?

I have also been looking at the NH-C14 with just the lower fan installed, but it is quite a bit above my intended budget.

I have just bought a second-hand pc-wreck(link will stop working after a month or two), which includes water cooling (that also caused it to become a wreck). I should receive it this week and will have try to find out if the dh101 case can somehow accommodate the radiator. If so, I think this could be quite a neat solution.

It also upgrades my pc-parts stock by the following

Gehäuse: Cosmos S
Grafikkarte: BFG GTX 280 oder 260 (may or not may not work, requires water cooling)
Netzteil: BeQuit! BQT E5-700W
Mainboard: P5QD Turbo
Soundkarte: Creative Labs SB0790
RAM: 2x2GB PC2 6400 PN OCZ2T800C44GK Titanium Edition
DVD Laufwerk: DH-16D2S
Harddisk: Samsung 160GB (SP1614C) (yippie!)
Prozessor: Q9400

So now a parallel project of putting together a near-silent office pc in a hard-core gaming case for my dad has emerged. I can already see that the issue with the cosmos' side fan colliding with any heatsink larger than 140mm will be my next challenge. I might be able to get an NH-D14 se2011 for quite a good price (will then have to buy the old mounting kit, or maybe swap it with someone who needs a 2011 kit:), but would not like to dismount the large side case fan. I have seen pictures of people cutting parts off their fans, but have not yet seen somebody do it to fit the NH-D14. But I guess this thread should focus on the DH-101.

If I manage to get the water-cooling kit installed in (or, more likely, around) the dh101 and the GPU still works, it will also have solved my GPU problem. But I somehow doubt I will find a suitable solution, so the air-cooling questions are still relevant.

I will have to test the the mainboards and see which performs better (one is p35, the other p45 chipset) with the two CPUs. The Q6600 will now be relegated to the Cosmos S.

Thanks again for your reply and please let me know what you think about omitting the clearance above top-down coolers in cases where there are ventilation holes above the CPU. Of course, I would also appreciate comments and tips on the other issue.

The only way to find out is to try. But the best solution is the NH-C14 with just the lower fan installed. Or perhaps the NH-L12.

In this case you'll probably could make an i7 work. But probably not quiet. i5k with moderate OC will work.

I'd be delighted to hear about the noise those 60mm fans are producing. Judging from the pictures on their website, airflow is pretty restricted. This case was never meant to host high power, high temp hardware. Using a tower cooler will do nothing to cool components on your mobo, come summer.

You could make this work, i'm sure. Is it near silent? Or just quiet? I think not according to spcr standards, but you could easily prove me wrong after assembly.

Hello,

I have a ZALMAN ZM-MFC1 PLUS which I will try to mount in a 5.25" space facing inward. With this I hope to manage the noise of the 60mm fans, but I will probably replace them anyway. As there is some space between the fans, I was thinking of finding a way to mount two 80mm fans. I know SPCR uses Nexus fans as reference, but how are the Yate Loon D..SL-12 fans, (not real silent case), such as this: D80SL-12 with plug (2000rpm) ( 80x80x25mm )?