Fanless system

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eeyrjmr

[H]ardness Supreme
Joined
Apr 23, 2002
Messages
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I have a Via Epia MII 12000 Nehemiah mobo for my storage server.
All is working well (running debian with SAMBA, Apache, MPD...)

However, while it isn't the loadest of things since it is in the living room it is noticable. I disconnected the fan on the case and the noise didn't really change much (possibly that case fan dB < CPU fan dB ??)

I would really like to get the noise down, I plan to test with just the case fan (it blows through the fins of the CPU heatsink anyway) but I was wandering if anyone has used this board fanless or anyone would recomend to or not to do that

I have set the CPU govener to ondemand at the moment (ie it spends 99% of its time at ~500MHz and ONLY sometimes goes to full-speed). I would concider setting the CPU govenor to powersave to hold the freq at ~550MHz if it ment I could go fanless

any recomendations?
 
I can#t help really :D

I have a EPIA-EN12000EG (fanless) and the PSU is doing my head in. I want a fanless PSU!!!

I have just a 160gb sata & the EPIA-EN12000EG how many watts can that be?

which fanless psu do I get! :confused:
 
While I don't know about fanless, there are enough heatsinks and fans out there that are basically silent. Arctic Cooling makes some pretty silent heatsinks, and for fans, a low speed yate loon is practically silent.
 
no fans at all isnt the best of ideas. since heat will still be involved. without fans to direct heat "outwards" it will just sit there.
 
There is very little heat off the mainboard. the C7 processor is 12W, so lets say the MB uses 30W. The disk probably consumes 8-10watts.

so I need a 50w psu, 85% efficient, that is only 7w of heat so it is going to be fine fanless.

the problem with a big power supply (250w) is that at such a light load they run < 50% efficient.
 
if you really want low power and all you're going to be doing is running a file server (no SLI or anything really freaky funny), then look around and buy an old thin client like a MaxSpeed MaxTerm 8300 or a Wyse Winterm. I've owned several of them and they all use mini-ITX Via systems. The coolest thing is that they all have special purpose PSUs that provide just enough power for the mobo + a couple of HDDs. And, because they're specially designed for the chassis, you've got a good fanless rig. A WinTerm is my current file server and it runs entirely fanless. The only moving parts are the platters in the HDD.
 
As the owner of an MII-10000 (identical to OP's, but 1GHz vs 1.2GHz), most of the noise does come from the CPU fan. It's not loud per se, but it is very noticeable because of how small it is, and how quickly it has to spin as a result. Most likely, you can disconnect the CPU fan altogether as long as you put in a reasonably high volume fan pointing directly at (not across) the heatsink. A decent 80mm+ running at low RPM should do the job well.
 
PicoPSU is great, but it still needs a pure +12V feed. You need to pick up something like a laptop charging brick and do a little soldering. The alternative is to run it off your main PSU, if you plan on having both computers on at the same time.
 
decided against a 100% fanless. Even though I underclocked my VIA CPU (1.2gig --> 520Meg) still wanted to move the air so disconnected the CPU fan (the faster of the two) and under-volted the case fan (12V -->7V). The case fan sucks air through the CPU heatsink fans anyway so that still has some cooling

CPU idle temp ~29C and when CPU in heavy use (doing a load of thumbnails for web-gallery) it goes to ~40C so not to bad.
 
do they make sff 80 plus power supplies>? Ive got an antec earthwatts, its never feels hot, never even warm, cold to the touch, the fan never veers from its slow rpm. even if i put my ear to it, i couldnt tell it was operating.
 
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