Quietest cooling for AMD Athlon 64 LE-1600 in home server?

Cooling Processors quietly

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MarkProvanP
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Quietest cooling for AMD Athlon 64 LE-1600 in home server?

Post by MarkProvanP » Sun Jan 03, 2010 2:16 pm

Right now I have a home server (that runs FreeNAS) which has an AMD Athlon 64 LE-1600. Right now it makes some noise and I want to get it quieter (or if possible, silent), since it is quite noticeable later at night and it is normally turned off by other people. FreeNAS has CPU utilisation of less than 3% max, and all the fanless coolers that I have seen would be overkill for it. Soon, I'm going to get one of these to keep hard drive noise down:

SilverStone CFP51
(Sorry about how I can't post links yet, I only joined so I could ask this question)

I'm going to swap the current circa-2004 beige & black case with very little airflow to the one I currently use for my main computer. Has anyone seen a suitable cooler for it, even a relatively quiet fan-based one? It is by no means required, but it would be a good thing for it. There is no side CPU vent on the case, but since it will be against a wall this would not make a difference.

-- Edit --

Also, is it a good idea to control a CPU fan with a front panel fan controller?

SebRad
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Post by SebRad » Mon Jan 04, 2010 1:44 am

Hi, Welcome to SPCR!
Your CPU is low power and I would guess any good sized heatsink with a very quiet fan should be fine, you have any budget in mind?
I'll start by suggesting Scythe Mini-Ninja, currently £32 inc super-saver delivery. Probably could cool you CPU passivly at idle as long as good case air flow and certainly with the included 80mm fan running at low, very quiet speed. I would suggest using the included fan run off 5v so should be dead quiet while providing plenty of cooling even if CPU gets loaded.

Xigmatek S963 is very effective cooler and cheap (~£15) but the included PWM fan won't run less 1300rpm so not that quiet. Could be great with a quieter fan or possibly, with your CPU, no fan at all or ducted to the rear case fan.

Good luck, Seb

MarkProvanP
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Post by MarkProvanP » Mon Jan 04, 2010 1:57 pm

That Xigmatek looks quite interesting, and it has quite a nice price as well. Also, is it wise to run a traditional (like the reference cooler) CPU cooler without a fan? I would never try with the stock cooler, obviously, but it was just a thought.

Firetech
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Post by Firetech » Mon Jan 04, 2010 10:01 pm

Given the current weather in Scotland you shouldn't need a cooler! :lol:

Are you sure it's the CPU fan that's causing the noise and not the PSU, case fan or graphics card fan?

I've got an LE in my server and it's pretty quiet even with the stock HS&F.

Maybe wait until you've done the case swap before you buy anything else as it could be the existing biege case is keeping all the heat in causing the fans to ramp up in speed (take the case side panel off and see/listen to what happens)

MarkProvanP
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Post by MarkProvanP » Tue Jan 05, 2010 10:42 am

When I rebuilt the server I thought about not connecting the cheap 80mm PWM fan, but I didn't need to decide anyway since the cable wasn't long enough! And there are no PCI devices installed at all anymore, and even when I did have an 8400GS in it the graphics card was fanless.

Is there a safe way to check whether the CPU cooler or the PSU is causing the noise? It is a noticable whirring noise, audible throughout the room (wood-floored dining room) and it is actually really annoying. Is it safe to unplug the CPU fan with the stock cooler, even if only for a few seconds?

idale
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Post by idale » Tue Jan 05, 2010 10:50 am

MarkProvanP wrote:Is it safe to unplug the CPU fan with the stock cooler, even if only for a few seconds?
Obviously it's not advisable to run fanless on a heatsink that's made for a fan, but unless you've got real thermal issues in your case, stopping it just long enough to see if it's causing the noise problem shouldn't be an issue. I've done the same thing in my cases when I've been trying to locate noisy fans. :)

Firetech
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Post by Firetech » Tue Jan 05, 2010 9:57 pm

MarkProvanP wrote:Is there a safe way to check whether the CPU cooler or the PSU is causing the noise? It is a noticable whirring noise, audible throughout the room (wood-floored dining room) and it is actually really annoying. Is it safe to unplug the CPU fan with the stock cooler, even if only for a few seconds?
Easiest way is to take off the side panel and stick your ear (still attached to your head of course) inside and have a good listen.
You can unplug the fan but some MBs have a warning/safeguards which may shut the PC down.
I usually just use my fingers (don't just ram them in between the blades - hold them flat against the blades direction of rotation and gently apply pressure) or even a pencil eraser to stop the CPU fan.

Also try sitting the case on top of something absorbent like a foam block, lid off a box of A4 paper etc to prevent any noise being transmitted directly to the floor boards and causing the resonance.

As for the case fan - I'm sure you could source an extension cable for it from KustomPCs or similar stores.

Esben
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Post by Esben » Sat Jan 09, 2010 3:19 am

If you don't mind the reduction in CPU performance, you can run your CPU at 1 GHz 0.8v. Then you can just remove the fan from the stock heatsink. That's what I've done with an Athlon X2 4800+, and it's completely stable and temperature is not a problem. You might even be able to run it a bit faster, since yours is a single core. I'd experiment with 1.2 GHz at 0.8v and about 1.4 GHz with ~0.85v.

MarkProvanP
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Post by MarkProvanP » Sat Jan 09, 2010 2:08 pm

I looked at undervolting it before, but it seems that low-end Gigabyte boards don't let you, unfortunately.

Esben
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Post by Esben » Sun Jan 10, 2010 3:48 am

Even if your BIOS doesn't support undervolting, it can be done with software such as RMClock, CrystalCPUID etc. For Linux I don't know what the similar utilities are called.

MarkProvanP
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Post by MarkProvanP » Fri Jan 15, 2010 1:23 pm

I'm not sure about installing extra software on FreeNAS, as I have tried before several times and I think that because it is set up as an embedded install (i.e. it loads the OS into RAM and all config changes are stored in an .xml file on a hard drive) it does not let you install extra programs. Personally, I would move to a more standard Linux install by now but the HDD is formatted in a way that Linux cannot use.

Esben
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Post by Esben » Mon Jan 18, 2010 5:28 am

Sorry didn't know the FreeNAS was a special embedded install. That complicates matters a bit. Maybe there's some other way to undervolt it, or you could consider running Linux and use Samba for sharing the harddrive. But considering FreeNAS has formatted the drive in some unknown way, it's probably difficult to migrate your harddrive to Linux.

Chris Chan
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Post by Chris Chan » Mon Jan 18, 2010 6:48 pm

Looks like FreeNAS formats its disks as UFS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_File_System) by default. Yuck. Linux has no write support for it. xBSD does though, apparently.

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