Best Passive Heatsink for 25W socket A

autoboy · Post by **autoboy** » Sun Nov 20, 2005 9:11 pm

I underclocked my athlon XP to 1Ghz and undervolted it to 1.175 V. It now runs at 29C with a cheapo masscool heatsink and panoflo L1A at 5V. It is now running aproximately 25W. This is going to be running a media center in my bedroom so I want the computer as quiet as possible but I also don't want to spend any money becuase i don't really need a media center in my bedroom when my 56" DLP is in the family room.

I wanna know what the best passive heatsink is out there for my socket A system. Not a lot of new heatsinks mount to socket A. It could be just a fanned heatsink with the fan taken off. I have an antec truepower 2.0 powersupply that i stumbled upon that i plan on modding with a Nexus 120mm fan. My plan is to use the nexus as the only fan in the system to draw heat off the passive cpu and out of the system.

Here are some of my ideas:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835183111
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 118102[url][/url]

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Sun Nov 20, 2005 9:37 pm

Scythe Katana is $30 on newegg, has Socket A compability, and can cool the heck out of 25 W.

Did excellent in the SPCR review: "It's probably the best heatsink currently made for socket A / 370."

autoboy · Post by **autoboy** » Sun Nov 20, 2005 11:44 pm

Yeah, I saw that one too but i did not knowtice the price. $30 is a good price for a heatpipe cooler. It is too bad it cannot be oriented in any direction for socket A. Thats why i was kinda looking at larger squarer heatsinks in case i decided to use a rear fan.

pangit · Post by **pangit** » Mon Nov 21, 2005 4:35 pm

I'm running an Aerocool HT-101 passively in my XP2400+, but with the 120mm PSU fan right next to it. I don't think you will have a problem exhausting only 25W of heat through the PSU, especially if your goal is for a 1 fan PC. So I wouldn't worry about orientation too much, as long as you can point it towards your PSU.

Mine is a 2 fan PC as it has an intake fan near the hard drives, but I probably wouldn't need the second one if I didn't have an intake filter.

Put a duct between the CPU and PSU, and seal all holes apart from your main intake and exhaust, and you should easily achieve a 1 fan PC. Bluefront has done it too, do a search an you can see his ideas (some of which I stole!)

autoboy · Post by **autoboy** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 10:56 am

I did not realize that the aerocool ht 101 supported socket A. I have one on my sempron 2600+ for socket 754 ducted to the backplane and it works great. It has nice wide fins that works well with low airflow. Hmm, too bad it is 45 bucks. I guess that is not too bad. It is exactly what i had in mind. You are probably right about the 25W though. I could probably just take the fan off my crappy masscool heatsink and i would be fine except that i am folding on this computer and that can heat it up.