Right, the fans on my PC are doing my head in!!

The CPU is an Athlon XP, and the HSF appears to be an Asaka unit which has a control on the back where a PCI card should be. Even when it is down very low it's whiney and irritating whilst I'm trying to concentrate.

The problem is, there are no case fans what so ever so I don't want to run the risk of turning the HSF down too low.

What is the best (reasonably priced) passive cooling system around for an Athlon? Considering there are no case fans, is passive cooling going to be okay? I could always buy a 10 or 12cm fan at the same time if it's not realistic to rely soley on a passive HSF for cooling. I'm sure a bigger fan at a lower RPM will be less noisey than this horrible thing I've got to put up with at the moment.

I used to have an athlon and I bought a zalman flower HSF for it.

It has a 12cm fan (IIRC) and runs at fairly lower rpm so is very quiet.

I wouldn't rely on passive cooling though, esp with no case fans.

I would steer away from a Passive Heatsink as you dont really have any air flow through your case, I take it your talking socket A athlon and not 754 or 939?

I don't know what socket it is, to be honest.

The way the board is set out, there is very little space between the HSF and memory, and the same for the HSF and PCI/AGP slots. It doesn't sound like that one you mentioned would fit, OJ.

What would you guys recommend as a quiet cooling system, if passive is probably not going to work?

And please don't mention water cooling, I'm on a budget! Planning to buy second hand.

Ah yeah, the zalman only works if there's quite a bit of room.

As for quiet HSFs, have a looky here... www.quietpc.com

That's where I got my zalman from. I haven't been on in a while but they normally have some good stuff and a table that will tell you what is compatible with your hardware.

Also download SiSandra Lite

It'll tell you all about the socket of your mobo and model number etc...

That looks very much like what I've got at the moment, except mine has a yellow fan.

tbh, it may just be that I've got it turned up too high. I just don't want to turn it down too much and fry it. Are these fans not automatic? I thought they were supposed to adjust their speeds according to the temperature of the unit??

Okay, am I imagining things here or was there a post here a minute ago linking to a product on dabs.com?

If it'll fit, what about the AC Freezer 64?

no your not going mad
it was to a akasa HS&fan that i had but i had misread your post as you require passive cooling …

^this. its cheap (bout 15 quid), effective, and fits 754 and 939 athlons. probably wont fit on socket A though, so check up on that first

Right, from my experience OCing SktA or 468 Athlon XPs, I give you a few tips:

The ACF64 Pro will not fit. It's too wide. I nearly lost my motherboard to this (the brackets almost broke the tracks around the socket)

Get one of These. I used one of those in my long running AXP rig. Was nice and quiet, and kept temps way under 60*C even when overclocked beyond 2.5ghz.

Athlons will burn out after prolonged exposure to temps above 75*C. I've had this happen to me before, and I don't want it to happen to you.

Hope this helps!