DescentBB

I have assembled all the basic components of my "silent" system, the only parts yet to be fitted are the passive Sonic Tower CPU cooler (on backorder), PCI TV tuner, Vantec Nexus fan controller and temperature monitor and a general tidy up of the wires and things.

Anyway, the AMD64 3200+ (Venice) with the stock cooler (it doesn't even have a copper core!) yields an idle temperature of 29 degrees C!

Even under load, the thing sits at 31 C. The heatsink is barely warm!

Wow.

Interestingly, I tired the onboard 7.1 sound. I was prepared to be impressed, but was most resoundingly NOT. The Santa Cruz card kills the onboard sound.

64 bit runs cooler than 32's, under normal use my CPU (Athlon64 3200+) never gets over 40C. I only even have 2 fans in a case the size of germany.

Darkside Heartless wrote:64 bit runs cooler than 32's

Someone skewer that for me, I can't think how to best do it.

Pffft, my Athlon 1.4 runs at 60C. You and your new fandangled CPU's...

I won't speak for the A64s but I was pleasantly surprised at how quiet some of the stock Athlon XP coolers are. I recently built a new PC for my folks (only they don't know it yet ) and slapped the stock cooler of either my 2400+ or 3000+, I can't remember which, onto it and you can't hear it at all. I'd be perfectly happy to sit it under a TV and use it as a media box if 1) I didn't already have a perfectly cabable standalone player (capable of playing DivX/XviD files ) and 2) weren't giving it to my folks. For 32 bit Athlon XPs at least I'd consider massive heatpipe coolers a massive waste of money.