My suggestion is no. If you have bought one of the coolers that is certified by AMD to work with their processors, keep it on. Alternatively, get a quieter CPU cooler.
No, no, no, no!!! that loud cooling device is important!
According to AMD you need like 92 degree to exceed their safety zone, but you probably would want to approach that, and its likely you would if you unpluged your fan/heatsink! resulting in death to your processor.
I have a Volcano 6 and my cpu is running at 63 degrees, and to most that is alarmingly high!
what heatsink/fan you got? just a generic? that could be the problem, but then again a $50 cdn Volcano 7 will keep things cool, but if you got a cramped case with no ventilation it will run at high speeds all the time and just be loud.
i would suggest looking at upgrading your cpu heatsink/fan, safest and best alternative to buying a new CPU!
I really don’t think that the PSU fan is going to move enough air through the heatsink to keep the processor cool when under load.
You could try it, but the Athlons don’t have any kind of overheat protection, so you’re running a fairly high risk that you’ll very quickly wind up with a melted lump where your cpu used to be.
You might want get a bigger heatsink with a fan that has a speed control on it, so you can turn it down so it’ll be quieter.
If you want really quiet, a water cooling system might be the way to go, but there aren’t many commercially available ones, and building your own isn’t for the faint of heart.
Or perhaps you could get some extention cords for the keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc, and put the cpu in a closet. That’s what I wound up doing after I got tired of maintaining my homegrown water cooling rig. It works great for me.
funilly enough buckgully I already have extention cords for my mouse and keyboard. I half-inched them from work (I hope none of my bosses read the SDMB).
Also. I could kiss you! (but I am not going to) I will probably buy a small wooden cabinet to put the PC into. I am sure there are even ones designed for putting PCs into.
Thanks everyone!
[ol][li]Get a software cooler, which works by shutting down the CPU during its idle cycles. One such program, VCool, is written specifically for AMD chips and has the additional attraction of being free. For some reason, its home page is offline as I write this, but Googling on it turns up lots of download locations (e.g., here). Another program, CpuIdle Pro, allows further CPU cooling under Windows NT and 2000, but it’s not free. Using a software cooler will allow you to install a quieter (slower) fan for the CPU heatsink. Standard Disclaimer: Use at own risk. I’ve had no problems with these, but YMMV.[/li][li]If you’re curious about what the temperatures are in the rest of your computer, get Motherboard Monitor, which is also freeware.[/li][li]Get a quiet CPU fan. Google on quiet PC and you’ll find several vendors that sell silent (or less noisy) CPU fans. I wouldn’t just turn off the fan completely, though.[/li][li]You mentioned PSU and CPU fans. Do you also have a case fan? Those can be loud, too.[/li][li]Check your video card – does it also have a heatsink/fan on it? And the motherboard, too (NOT the CPU). Add all these up and pretty soon your computer starts to howl like a hurricane.[/ol]Some additional sources:[/li]http://home.swipnet.se/tr/silence.html http://www.directron.com/quietpc.html http://www.tomsimpson.com.au/silentpc/ http://fredrik.hubbe.net/silence/how.html
>> The PSU has an extra fan that points down into the computer. And is quite close to the CPU’s bigish heatsink (with fan on top)
The PSU pulls air from the case out, it does not blow air into the case. Even if it did it would be hot air. Even if it was ambient air it would not adequately cool the CPU. So the answer is that you should not disable the CPU fan.
Changing the fan to a quieter model is definitely an option.
Putting the PC in a more sound proof place is good. (You can also put soundproofing directly on the PC.)
To add a little info to the overheating symptoms, in my experience overheaded computers have wildly abnormal behavior long before there’s irreversible damage to the chips. (There ARE other situations, tho! Like catching fire.) If the room temperature is 65 degrees (and not 90), chances are pretty good that disconnecting one fan – while leaving the others running – will just shorten the lifespan of various ICs. But that shortened life may just mean 5 years, instead of 10. If you won’t be using the computer 5 years from now, there’s no problem in that respect.
I have a Macintosh without a hard disk that I run without any fan at all, but I drilled a bunch of extra ventilation holes in the case. (Not recommended for modern computers…)
Make sure that it has adequate ventilation or you will still end up with an overheating problem; of course adequately ventilating it will let the noise out…
Get a nice quit cpu fan like the Molex Radial Fan, line the sides of the cabinet with noice reducing material and if you have any other coolers like cabinet fans - replace them with low noice version.
I have an AMD T-bird 1400 running at around 50-58c depending on what it does, lined with this anti-noice stuff, with a molex cooler and a Silent Systems low noice PSU and I can barely hear it.
Spinning down your harddrives or suspending them in rubber bands might help alot too.
You definitely don’t want to neglect a CPU fan. If the PSU has a downward blowing fan, it’s definitely odd… but since the air it’s getting would be from the PSU area, it’d be hot anyway.
CPU fans are absolutely critical. I doubt your computer would run for more than 5 minutes with the setup you suggest, even at idle… it’d probably just freeze up.
If you’re using a retail fan, those are usually 60mm, so they have to run at 6000 RPM to provide adequate airflow. Upgrade to an 80mm heatsink and fan, and a 2800-3200 fan will be adequate for your cooling needs. I have that setup now and I can barely hear it.
The panaflow L1A (I think this is the model #, I could be wrong) is probably the best value (rated at 28 dbA, I got mine for less than $5 a month ago), though Papst fans are the best fans ever (rated ~10dbA) though they’re expensive. (Note: I’m quoting 80mm fans.)
I don’t have the threads bookmarked anymore, but go to the Anandtech forums and do a few searches, you’ll learn more than you ever wanted to know about CPU cooling, and find a list of reputable vendors a mile long.
There’s apparently great potential for marking up prices for these things (my fans, which cost about $3 a piece went for as much as $11 per), so shop around.