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The CPU Cooler
One Challenge to overcome in a fanless system is the CPU's heat output. In
traditional CPU heatsinks large blocks of metal are combined with high RPM
fans to keep the CPU happy and cool. The new breed of fanless heatsinks and
even the newer high performance heatsinks use a technology that has become
more popular in recent years. Heat pipes use hollow tubes filled with a blend
of unique chemicals to help pull away and dissipate heat from the CPU. A
fanless heatsink uses several heat pipes and a large heat spreader to help
pull heat away from the CPU and dissipate it in the case either through
alternate airflow or from convection. |
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The VGA Cooler
All mid to high end video cards have GPU fans and often employ non-standard
materials like copper that help in the dissipation of heat. When we started
this project we were just going to use a NVIDIA 5200 video card by EVGA that
has a large pancake heatsink on it. Thermaltake to the rescue again. With
Thermaltake’s offer we were able to upgrade to a much better card, the
NVIDIA 7800 GTX and thus rounding out our zero moving part system. |
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The System Core
For this project we opted for some lower high end components for the system
core. We chose to go with an ASUS motherboard, an Intel Pentium D dual core 3.2
GHZ CPU and some Kingston
ram. The main reason we chose the Intel CPU is if for some reason there was a
thermal issue it will self-protect the CPU unlike AMD's. Granted the AMD may
be cheaper and faster for a comparable system in some cases with some vendors.
But I really don’t like the smell of burnt CPU in the morning. My K7
back in the day cured me of that. But if you really wanted a kick ass system
I recommend the Intel Core 2 CPU’s and a good Abit
or Asus Board. You should be able to get greater performance and less heat
and power consumption. |
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Ram Sinks
For the ram to keep the system stable we felt some ram sinks would be a good
idea. We didn’t want to nuke our 1 GB 50.00 stick of "Value
Ram".... Thermaltake also just so happened to have a solution for the
system ram. The only down side is you can only run 2 sticks in dual channel
with these babies due to their size. But 2 gig of ram for most people
is a great amount. You could even use 2 Gig sticks if you needed it. |
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PSU Adapter
For our motherboard we needed to pick up a 20 to 24 pin power adapter and a 4
pin to 8 pin adapter as well. Now I actually bought this myself.... it turns
out that ThermalTake makes some rocking products as this was the best and
one of the cheapest packages I was able to find for both. |
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