Passive Cooling Epia C3 800

[conan]

I know the question has been asked many times but over the many threads I can't anybody who has actually done this. Now I've joined the SFF society with my Chyang Fun Mini ITX box and Epia C3 800 mobo I now need to progress and silence the little rascal. At the moment it's the noisiest PC in the house, maybe that's a testimony to the work I've done on the other 3 rigs though.

So far there are 3 moving parts in the PC, HDD, fan on the CPU heatsink and the fan in the PSU. HDD I can sort by putting it in a spare silent drive I have (No optical drive in this rig). That leaves me with the CPU fan and PSU fan. I want to lose the CPU fan altogether, I'm thinking of using one of the Zalman passive northbridge heatsinks. Has anybody done this and does it cool effectively? The PSU I'll have to take apart and try to replace the fan with something quieter.

The box won't be seeing much activity, just downloading and file serving so the CPU load shouldn't be too high.

[jsterling]

A ZAlman heatsink should so on the CPU as it gives out so little heat (around 10w). As for the PSU look at one of the Morex ones that come with an external power brick, they ca give 55w of power so if that's enough go with it. Also lex make some that do 60 and 110w, see if you can find them. To find out how much power you nned there is a calculator at the right-hand side of the mini-itx.com homepage.

I'm looking to get into them (why i seem to know what i said above :eek: ) and would like to know what you use yours for and how fast is it (win XP)

[abe]

With ample air flow in the case I have seen people use the Zalman Northbridge Heatsink.

I have a Zalman FanMate on my own Epia 800 with the original heatsink but a different 40mm fan (other one had strange revving noise syndrome).

[ParrotBoy]

I'm using the old (gold rather than blue) zalman heatsink on my M10000, it was running fine for simple tasks, but got up to about 55C when watching movies, that was in a morex case with only one of the rear 40mm fans running

[Stick]

I've been using a Zalman NB32 on the CPU of the EPIA 800 based server, for abut 6 months now. I have this fitted in a 2677 case, with a PAPST rear case fan that shifts about 6cfm of air.
The heatsink can't cool the CPU sufficinetly at anything above 75% continuousl load.

But for file serving it copes very well. (It also runs EDonkey for file down/uploads).

An NB47 would perform better, but still wouldn't cope at full load.

Hope this helps

Nigel

[conan]

Thanks all for the input, the general consensus seems to be that the CPU can run with a Zalman if it's not stressed too much. What I plan to do after reading the replies is to stick a Zalman on the CPU and add a little airflow from a silent 80mm fan. I have vent holes in the front of the case so I'll position a papst there blowing over the heatsink.

The PSU comes fitted with the case so I don't really want to swap it for an external unit like a morex. It's a 150w Chyang fun that's probably way over spec for what's needed but having taken it out for a look I've decided on what to do with this as well. It's an 80mm fan so I'll stick a papst in there but also cut the exess aluminium away from the fan cover and use a wire fan grill to improve the airflow. That should sort it I think.

Again, thanks for the input:)

/edit, jsterling, not used mine for anything yet as I just got it through the post saturday morning. Initially planned to use it for a download box but now I'm going to try it as a HTPC (and downloadf box). Although I've just finished building my HTPC this is so small and pretty good looking so I'll see if it can cope OK with the films (should do I think). I'm gonna install MYHTPC and see how that runs. So far performance is fine, but I've set winXP visually to prioritise on perfomance instead of looking good. It makes quite a bit of difference. Not sure yet whether I'll keep Win on it or put Mandrake Linux on. I have to do some digging and check for drivers and such like.

[ParrotBoy]

Be careful with the pwer supply fan - I got one of the Epia800+Cube bundles yesterday, and when I opened up the power supply, I found that the 80mm fan is only half height, plus the inside wiring of the power supply means that you will have to unsolder some wires to get the lid off properly.

[conan]

Found exactly the same myself last night when I opened it up :) Just put it back together for now while I have a look round and see what's available.

[ParrotBoy]

If you find any half-height bloo fans let me know :)

[conan]

Still haven't found any Blue fans (or any half height ones), but I've had another look at this today. The fan thats in is on a 2 pin connector and so I can get it out without having to cut/desolder any wires:)

I'm gonna cut the blowhole out properly and replace it with a wire grill, this should improve the performance and the noise. I'm gonna try and 7v the fan if possible until I can find a new one somewhere.