Hy guys,
I'm building an HTPC with used and re-purposed hardware. I've got an Asrock b75m, some corsari ram and a pentium g645T.
Have any of you used the totally passive Arctic Alpine 11 cooler? It SHOULD be able to handle the 35W dissipated by the CPU, but I'd like your opinion.
The discrete GPU I'll be using is passive and the case will have no fans in it, except for the PSU, which has a 120mm fan exhausting from the case to the outside.
The processor should not work very hard, since all the transcoding will be done by the plex media server.
Thanks for the help!
I don't know. That is a bit small for a passive cooler. When using passive coolers, you are relying either on the case's fans moving air over the cooler or convection to make the air rise through the cooler as it heats the surrounding air. So no case fans and a small passive cooler like that makes me hesitant. Since it is such a low tdp and won't be doing much, I imagine that it might be fine, but if it were me, I would go with a quiet active cooler instead of trying to make it passive. Quiet fans are just as good as no fans for silence and better for cooling.
I know, i share your hesitance. I have Noctua fans and coolers in my other systems, but I was trying to spend nothing or very little for this system. I guess I might try with the arctic for a little test run and if it gets too hot, I'll switch to something else...
Ah, just to give you some idea, the case it's some old OEM Hp/PB/dell case from 2006, with a 90mm exhaust fan slot and no front intake. Lots of holes in the side panels for free exhaust, but I mean it's just a metal box. I don't really want to buy a htpcesque matx case if I can avoid it...
I was hoping someone had tried this cooler in some of their systems. Oh well... :)
Cheap solution would be to just zip tie a case fan to the side of the arctic if it doesn't cool well enough as is.
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