Completely passively cooled PC?

Arclight · 06-30-09, 03:09 AM

It's possible with the right components. Both AMD and Intel have CPUs that are designed to be energy efficient and run cool. Entry/budget GFX cards are sometimes passively cooled out of the box. As long as you put a good 3rd party cooler on the CPU, it should manage. But, I would always advice to a least put some fans in the case to create airflow around the parts. A completely passive cooling solution will have a lot of heat build up inside the case.

IMO it's doable for a purely media-centered PC (HTPC), doing nothing more than playback audio and video. Intense usage of the CPU or GPU, for example encoding/decoding and gaming, put out a lot more heat than streaming media.

You might also want to use external storage in such a case. The more heat-producing components outside the case, the better.

06-30-09, 03:09 AM	#2
Arclight Navy Seal Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Land of windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and cheese. Lots of cheese. Posts: 8,467 Downloads: 53 Uploads: 10	It's possible with the right components. Both AMD and Intel have CPUs that are designed to be energy efficient and run cool. Entry/budget GFX cards are sometimes passively cooled out of the box. As long as you put a good 3rd party cooler on the CPU, it should manage. But, I would always advice to a least put some fans in the case to create airflow around the parts. A completely passive cooling solution will have a lot of heat build up inside the case. IMO it's doable for a purely media-centered PC (HTPC), doing nothing more than playback audio and video. Intense usage of the CPU or GPU, for example encoding/decoding and gaming, put out a lot more heat than streaming media. You might also want to use external storage in such a case. The more heat-producing components outside the case, the better. __________________ Contritium praecedit superbia.