Passive radiator for 210W of heat?
 

Hello,

I'm about to build a new HTPC / fileserver combo with a Pentium D820 CPU and six to eight Sata drives. Now the thing is that I would like to have this lot passively cooled, according to charts the CPU will generate up to 130W and the drives about 10W each.

What I had in mind was either two Zalman Reserator towers or two innovaKonvekt-O-Matic PASSIVE MAXI radiators.

Any comments on either of these choices?

I will probably hire someone on these forums to mill out the HDD blocks.

Is it me, or is the innovaKonvekt-O-Matic PASSIVE ULTRA over £120 plus delivery.
HELLO.

Can't help but think a horizontally orientated large heatercore/radiator will outperform and be cheaper. Something like the thing that Cathar made for Athalus:
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/sh...athar+Radiator
which apparently cost just AUD$150 = approx £60.

A quote around there has Cathar saying a typical 120.2 radiator is good for "cooling up to 400W of heat load without using stupidly noisy fans and without letting the water temps climb past 10C above ambient". You're going passive, but then only 210 watts?

Also, are you water cooling the PSU? What video card do you plan to run, and does it need cooling? Is there a point to having a silent CPU cooler if the GPU and PSU have fans? Remember that ANY air flow to the radiator is going to have a very large impact on the cooling ability. Eg: You'd may find a 80.1 radiator with a single 80mm fan for both the rad and PSU outperforms the passive radiators above with no "forced" air flow.

Is the case going to be Tower or Desktop? My current design (still in the design phase, sigh) has a normal tower modified to have a 120mm fan sucking air out the top of the PSU and out of the case, and then a 120.2 sized radiator on the bottom of the case as the sole way for air to move through. Not fanless, but a single tri-cod fan will be essentially silent and it will run far cooler than a truely passive rig, and no need to WC the PSU and HDDs.

Yes unfortunately.

The pics are broken. :(
Don't you have to mount a radiator horisontally for most efficient passive cooling?

The PSU has a 120mm fan and is supposed to be 21dB so not completely noiseless, but close. The GPU is a passively cooled 6600. I do have an 80.1 radiator in my gaming case and it needs a Vantec tornado to keep a 3400+ and a 6800GT cool (and yes the noise from it is driving me mad).

I plan to use this case so not the easiest one to find space for a radiator in. I might go for a PA160 if I can find a good looking way to mount it externally...

Not for me then or now? Perhaps join OCAU and then check it out?
Anyhow, its a mini-minor radiator, so should be plenty in the wreckers in the UK!

I ran 2 rads, each 130 x 150 vertically. They were shrouded and had fans, so really poorly configured for passive operation. Yet, they cooled a XP1600 @ 1433 via an ancient Maze 1 at only 20 degrees above ambient.

All I am saying is to make use of the fans you use. The graph near "zero" air flow is very steep. Best avoided.

. Turn it down. How slow can you get the fans before the CPU hits 50 or 60 degrees? How much heat is the pump adding (like, do you have an overpowerful pump)?

How much hacking can you stomache? I'd find a radiator sized externally the same or slightly smaller than the case's lid, and hack the entire lid off. Then I'd make all fans intake fans, and thus all air comes into the case and then exits over the big radiator.
2nd idea is to get a normal 120.2 sized rad and lie it down at the back out about 2 inches from the back of the PC. Yes, vertical is not as good, but meh.

I am a member there or I wouldn't even be able to read the thread. I guess the image host must be blocked by the corporate proxy here.

It is this mod that I use an 80.1 in. BF2 will become unstable after a while if I run the fan at 9V, at full blast it can keep on going for days.

The idea is to not have any protruding bits from the case itself. I might just mod a subwoofer to hold a PA160, pump, rad and some very silent fan pulling air through it.

Does this show up for you?
http://www.employees.org/~slf/amon/amon4.jpg

Cathar's done lots of testing of various fans for the PA160... he could probably advise the quietest one to use for the job, altho I'm guessing he'd say TriCod / YateLoon...

All i got to say is LC18. The screen looks sick. Think about that option since you are investing quite a bit of money. I know you have the $$ if you considered 2 passive rads costing $150-$180.
Please, do not hack a beautiful $200+ plus case or leave the top proturding out. Either way I would :cry:

You better start off by buying the case and put everything in there to get an idea how everything fits and what you plan to do. When I built my HTPC, placed the mobo, cd drive, psu, hard drives and filled up the pci slots, the case got filled up quickly. Connect all the sata cables, psu connectors, power connector, and Artic silencer and it gets worse. That was was max 4HD's at the time, not 8.

For 8 HDs, external rad is the only way. But not in the subwoofer. Lots of air is going in and out of subwoofer and if you cut a hole in the enclosure it can ruin the subwoofer intended internal design. Sound quality will drop off. Speaker enclosure is fine but outside ambient air. Speakers get hot and the enclosure air temps will rise.

I think 6 HD's is more realistic and spend the money from the 2 HD's and buy bigger drives. WCing 4-5 drives in the middle column and leave a single drive for OS, programs, under the 5" 1/2 baydrive behind the usb and firewire panel. Remove the right side cage and that leaves you enough space for the pump and tubing and a rad. A 120mm rad on the right hand side will fit easily, maybe a 120.2 even.......

Heatercore does fit but the spacing is very tight because it's so thick. Add a shroud and 120mm fan and that gets packed tighter than a DP sandwich.

Yes can see all images without problem from home, guess it is time to get my own proxy set up again ;)

Yeah, I will re-read the whole PA160 development thread.

Well, I never seen the point of having a small VGA display in a computer. I will however get this blue MDVA integrated in the front.

Well I was trying to order case, mobo, CPU, PSU and RAM today but since the mobo I want isn't in the normal stock they didn't manage to get back to me with a price before closing. When I know what space I have to mess around with I will decide on number of drives and the cooling.

Well didn't plan to have the subwoofer working after I'm done. Think of the end result as a square rad-box that look like a subwoofer to melt in nicely with the Home Theatre environment.

The RAID controller and five 200GB drives will come from here so no added cost.

When I have the main parts here sometime next week I will start planning the watercooling loop.

I don't think the 120.2 will fit. 284mm(28.4cm) long, just a cm or two too long. The silverstone case seems bigger in every dimension to mine so measure once u get the case.
120.2 will handle 200 watts easily with papst or yateloons at 12V

I think the heatercore can do because of the different case design gives it more space for a pump. A heatercore and MAG pump will do.

That case setup is very good with psu moved to other side of the mobo. Maybe i'll get one someday

If you are wanting to mod the case anyways, have a look at the antec overture (II). My guess looking at pictures of the thing is that it'll fit a 2x120 rad in the right hand side because of the peculiar frontmounted psu. Though would have to be a thermochill or maybe the new swiffy, other rads are simply too wide for this case.

The caveeat is that this case is pretty darn ugly, and you'd have to fit a new front. Current one is plastic, and not very esthetically pleasing. But if you are going to do some heavy modding anyways, you might as well have a look at it.

http://www.antec.com/ec/productDetails.php?ProdID=08731

http://www.antec.com/pdf/drawings/ov...echdrawing.pdf


All the drives might be hard finding room for though, but i guess most htpc cases would have that issue.

Thats a great idea. the sub grille could be an air filter for the intake; hide behind that a 160 mm fan turning really slow.

Super clean looks, very silent, efficient! :drool:

May I recommend something different than Zalman or Innovatek? I'm sure they work, but you can purchase the same exact thing on ebay for much cheaper. Go to ebay and search for transmission cooler. You'll see some entries that look exactly like Zalman's reserator minus pump and tubing. Here's one.

Have fun!

The PA160 should be able to handle the load as well then I presume?

I rather make a case from scratch than modding that thing to look good since it will involve the same amount of work.

You are reading my mind, shouldn't be too difficult to add a fair bit of sound dampening material in there as well.

Hmm, doing the same search but with the items located in the UK turned up 0 hits. The shipping across the pond will most likely be a lot more than they cost in the first place.

I think the plan is moving towards a near silent subwoofer right now.

I promise :)

Yes. Pa160 can handle the same load and some extra. DangerDen has them available to purchase.

The passive tranmission rads looks intersting. Thanks for the link.