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[marko]

This weekend, I have been mostly installing and configuring software after taking delivery of our new, fanless PC.

It's very quick. JRBenchmark returns between 5610 and 5650.

It's quieter than a quiet thing, and has the mother of all heatsinks on the CPU...


According to Aida64, CPU temps are around 40°C

[astromo]

More info on the case please.

Make, model, detailed specs, website, where to get one?

Thanks ..

[Hendrik]

I would be careful with full fanless systems, without at least one fan to get a bit of air movement going in the case itself to vent the heat, they can convert into a hotbox quite quickly - and to be honest, one proper case fan is basically inaudible.

[DarkPenguin]

If you want fanless get this ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LauL5JxYis

[astromo]

If you want fanless get this ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LauL5JxYis

That's the bit of hardware from Calyos:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1489140137/nsg-s0-worlds-first-fanless-chassis-for-high-perfo/description
but the photo posted looks significantly different.

[astromo]

I would be careful with full fanless systems, without at least one fan to get a bit of air movement going in the case itself to vent the heat, they can convert into a hotbox quite quickly - and to be honest, one proper case fan is basically inaudible.

Been using fanless hardware for years with no problem. Early experience showed me that it was important to get the right CPU for the job that matches the capability of the heat sink and heat transfer mechanism associated with the hardware you've got to work with. In short, I've opted for the lowest TDP I can get that doesn't cost stupid-$. The plus to all this is the low electrical power burn, so my set up is nice and "green".

I'm happy with RO Standard and Intel's integrated CPUs can handle the demand that MC places on the hardware I'm using. I haven't got a 30ft screen running 4K, so the visuals of RO Std work fine for me. Whatever works and whatever turns you on is how I'm guided.

[marko]

More info on the case please.

Make, model, detailed specs, website, where to get one?

Thanks ..

Morning astromo, apologies for the slow reply...

Got one of these from QuietPC.com

I swear, the silence is absolutely golden. I'm lovin' it.
Had the previous box about eight years, so I'm lovin' the speed boost I'm getting here too.
I priced all the bits individually from the cheapest online vendors I could find, and could have saved myself about £250 if I'd bought the bits and built it myself. I thought about this long and hard because I reckoned the charge for building was a bit steep, but in the end, decided to let them build it. Figured it was worth it when I factored in dealing with all the different vendors, delivery times for the bits, dealing with all the packaging afterwards etc. etc.

Aida64... Is that a reputable app? I've used it for as long as I can remember to keep tabs on hardware, but the ads are getting a bit annoying now.
I ran its stability test on here yesterday, with everything ticked except GPU and local disks, so that's CPU, FPU, Cache and Memory.

In less than three minutes, the CPU temps went from 41° to 100° and throttling kicked in.
With FPU unticked, it took just under eight minutes before throttling kicked in.


While this didn't fill me with supreme confidence, I'm still happy as temps have remained in the high thirties, low forties during general day-to-day usage so far.
Just to be sure about that though, I've installed Coretemp for a bit as it allows the temps to show on the taskbar where I can easily keep an eye on them.

-marko

[astromo]

Thanks for the back story.

Useful for general intelligence gathering. I've gota loose plan to get a machine together with improved graphics and the experience of others is valued.

As a suggestion, if you're concerned about temps running away, CoreTemp has a monitoring, alarm and sleep or shutdown function. I've got mine set to sleep. I figure that's easier on the system overall than a shutdown.

[mojave]

As a contrast in design, my HTPC uses 8 120mm fans - and is completely silent. The power supply's fan only goes on if the load is over 40%, which means it rarely goes on. The other 7 Noctua fans are super silent. The liquid cooled GPU (GTX 1080 Ti) idles at 20C with 45C on 100% load and the liquid cooled CPU idles at 25C with around 60C on 100% load. This is also a positive pressure design with all fans blowing inward. Hot air exhausts out the top of the case through holes in the cover and out the back of the case.

[DarkPenguin]

Nice looking system. But those temps, man. I'd consider a low noise fan ticking over real slow like on that. Just enough to push a little air past the CPU.

As to the system with all the Noctua fans. Those are lovely low noise (seriously ugly) fans. I think one of those would help a lot.

[marko]

Cheers DP. I did kind of wince a bit myself when I ran those tests yesterday!
I'm not into spending any more cash just now, so, I pulled the small Antec fan from the back of the old case and gave it a steam clean. See how much benefit there is here before possibly dipping my wallet again

The Icepipe thing works on convection, so it made sense to me to get a fan pulling air out the top of the case, but there's just not enough room there. There was just enough room to slide it inbetween the heatsink and the back of the case. The fan has a three-speed switch, 1 is just audible and no more, two and three are unacceptably loud, so, "1" it is.

This has brought the CPU temps down by about ten degrees. Stressed the CPU for over half an hour, and it got hot, but seemed to level out around 70-73 degrees, and no throttling....

a bit better, yes?
The four cores are now pretty much under 40° all the time now during normal usage, occassionally spiking up into the fifties and dropping straight back down again.
Would a Noctua fan shift more air for less or similar noise levels, or the same air for less noise?

[Hendrik]

Would a Noctua fan shift more air for less or similar noise levels, or the same air for less noise?

Its hard to tell without knowing what your current fan does, but the Noctua case fans are about the best you can get for noise at a still decent airflow. I use the 140mm variants everywhere.

[DarkPenguin]

Its hard to tell without knowing what your current fan does, but the Noctua case fans are about the best you can get for noise at a still decent airflow. I use the 140mm variants everywhere.

They're really expensive, tho. I'd look at the specs and find something around 17-20db.

[Hendrik]

They're really expensive, tho. I'd look at the specs and find something around 17-20db.

If you need like one or two, then a difference of a few dollars doesn't really make much of a difference, does it? Now if you wanted to install 10 or so maybe it would add up.

[marko]

So, I got two... 120's as, as far as I could tell, that's all I have mounting points for. NF-S12A FLX's.

Stuck one on the side, one on the back. Side one pulling air in, back one pushing it out, 900 rpm limiters inline.

Added FPU back into the stress test, and CPU levelled out at about 77°, with the cores peaking between 90-95°. Without FPU in the test, CPU did not get above 70°. Ran both tests for 15 minutes each.

Thanks for the advice. As much as I didn't want to hear it, there's no denying that the slightest stress without fans was sending the temps instantly orbital.

Concerns...
My fanless system now has two fans
No dust filters... gonna cause problems up the road a bit?

Happy... at the moment at least

Code: [Select]

=== Running Benchmarks (please do not interrupt) ===

Running 'Math' benchmark...
    Single-threaded integer math... 3.496 seconds
    Single-threaded floating point math... 2.440 seconds
    Multi-threaded integer math... 1.110 seconds
    Multi-threaded mixed math... 0.773 seconds
Score: 2430

Running 'Image' benchmark...
    Image creation / destruction... 0.165 seconds
    Flood filling... 0.225 seconds
    Direct copying... 0.379 seconds
    Small renders... 0.873 seconds
    Bilinear rendering... 0.731 seconds
    Bicubic rendering... 0.386 seconds
Score: 7974

Running 'Database' benchmark...
    Create database... 0.195 seconds
    Populate database... 0.741 seconds
    Save database... 0.156 seconds
    Reload database... 0.060 seconds
    Search database... 0.772 seconds
    Sort database... 0.687 seconds
    Group database... 0.543 seconds
Score: 6817

JRMark (version 22.0.110): 5740

[Hendrik]

For true fanless you probably need a really careful design, perhaps with one of those that can use the case itself to dissipate the CPU/GPU heat, but those builds cost a lot of money.
The important part for most people is that their system is entirely inaudible, which in my opinion and experience you can pull off with good fans.

[astromo]

marko, thanks for sharing.

Gaining an insight into your real world experience is very useful.

Out of interest and for context, what's the CPU you've got in the unit and what's its Tj max and TDP in watts?

Not entirely reliable but if the operating temp runs below the Tj max (at whatever margin suits) then the CPU "should" be OK.

[RoderickGI]

Not entirely reliable but if the operating temp runs below the Tj max (at whatever margin suits) then the CPU "should" be OK.

If CPU throttling had kicked in, and it had, the CPU was getting too hot.

I also use Noctua fans in both my PCs. Worth the money. I would love to have dead silent PCs, but my ears ring all the time anyway, so it wouldn't make much difference! 

[marko]

I'm not at home, but I'm sure it is an Intel i7 7th generation kaby lake going at 4.2 GHz... something like that anyway.

CoreTemp shows the Tj max as 100°, and I think the TDP figure is 91.

RoderickGI is correct. Under stress, with the FPU also included in the stress test, the thing hit 100° and began throttling within three minutes. Now, I've no idea how often that might occur in my daily usage, but it still felt overly fragile to me.

With the two fans going, the full stress test leveled out around 77° for the CPU, with the cores peaking around 90°.
In normal usage with the fans, the cores are up and down between 30° and 50° which seems OK to me.

I'm thinking about taking the fan off the side for next week and see how that fares, and, I still think the box could be full of fluff, with that Icepipe cooler all choked up within twelve months... and I'm not sure what to do about that.

I'm thinking of going back to QuietPC with this, as I found the remnants of something they'd used to do a 'burn in' test in the Appdata folder. Surely that would have included spinning the CPU at 100% for some time? Maybe the heatsink moved during transit? I don't know...

[astromo]

Geez, if they've done a "burn in" - wouldn't it be fair enough to be handed over the run time temperature profile to the customer?

[RoderickGI]

I'm thinking about taking the fan off the side for next week and see how that fares, and, I still think the box could be full of fluff, with that Icepipe cooler all choked up within twelve months... and I'm not sure what to do about that.

Always keep positive pressure in your case. Otherwise you will get dust being sucked in through all the little space around the case, which is a pain to clean, and likely to be worse for the PC. So if you are going to remove a fan, remove the rear fan which is currently sucking air out of the case and leave the side fan which is currently pushing air into the case, or change the direction of the rear fan. Or leave both in an have both pushing air into the case!

Personally I use three 140mm Noctua fans, all pushing air into the case, although one sits on top of the CPU cooler and isn't sealed tight against the top cover of the case, so it pushes air around inside a bit as well as pushes pulls air into the case. There are plenty of gaps in most cases for the air to escape, and in my setup the positive pressure case fans push lots of air out through the power supply, so that it is cooled and its fan doesn't need to start up often, if at all.

It is a Lian Li PC-C60 case, and all of the inlets have Lian Li filters on them. I just checked, and they need to be vacuum cleaned again, which is the only way to clean them without pulling the PC out of the cabinet (difficult) and completely apart (annoying). Vacuuming from the outside works though, and as I use positive pressure, dust doesn't accumulate inside the case from other openings.


First image: Replaced the two Lian Li 140mm case fans with Noctua fans after three years of use.
Second image: Yes, dust is a problem, and intake filters are pretty important. You can see the filter supports in the top case inlet in this image.
Third image: This is how I clean out my electronic equipment when the cases are open. 

[marko]

Geez, if they've done a "burn in" - wouldn't it be fair enough to be handed over the run time temperature profile to the customer?

Hmmmm.... well, I'm home now...

The clue they left in the Appdata folder, was a single dat file in C:\ProgramData\PassMark\BurnInTestStd

So I downloaded the thing for a look. It's highly configurable, so I left everything default and ran the test.
CPU temps barely got to 60°, so I took a closer look, and all of the test apart from 'disk' default to 50% load. I removed them all and left CPU, switching it to 100% load. Now I got similar results to Aida64.

The PassMark software has a "CPU (Max Temp)" quick test, which oddly, again, barely pushed the temps over 60°.
I don't want to be fretting over temps. This thing should really just work as advertised, without me having to worry about such things.
It would appear that you can have a CPU running at 100% in various ways, and not all of them send the temps through the roof... How likely is that in real world usage, a user like me, who's not playing games or video editing every hour available, would cause that kind of stress on a CPU?

RoderickGI...
#3 is funny
The positive pressure thing is interesting... will give that some thought.

-marko

[astromo]

Under stress, with the FPU also included in the stress test, the thing hit 100° and began throttling within three minutes. Now, I've no idea how often that might occur in my daily usage, but it still felt overly fragile to me.

FYI:
https://forums.aida64.com/topic/1629-real-world-benefit-of-fpu-test/

[marko]

Yeah... so, you know what... to hell with it...

This morning, I've unplugged both fans. I could hear them, that bothered me
CPU hasn't gone over 50°

We'll see how this goes. I've also emailed QPC for their thoughts on this.

[DarkPenguin]

Yeah... so, you know what... to hell with it...

This morning, I've unplugged both fans. I could hear them, that bothered me
CPU hasn't gone over 50°

We'll see how this goes. I've also emailed QPC for their thoughts on this.

Sizzle....

[astromo]

We'll see how this goes. I've also emailed QPC for their thoughts on this.

Please continue to share. I'm intereseted to hear what the supplier has to say as I'm not so sure how realistic the AIDA64 stress test is for your real world usage profile.

[marko]

Sizzle....

Sizzle indeed, but, what I really want to know, I guess, is, if the thing has a TjMax of 100°, what counts as 'stress'?

If it's constantly running at 90°, life expetancy will be low, I get this. Is it all relative? So, the lower the average temps, the longer it will last, from zero all the way up to 100, or is there tipping point where, if temps are regularly above a certain point, life expectancy will deteriorate, but below it, and all will be cushty?

What's the life expectancy anyway? Over the years, I've had a ton of hardware die on me, but never a CPU... *touches wood*

Please continue to share. I'm intereseted to hear what the supplier has to say as I'm not so sure how realistic the AIDA64 stress test is for your real world usage profile.

Well, I asked him, and his response was to ask what I was doing, so...

Sent: 16 June 2017 11:59
To: Simon Elliott
Subject: RE: A480s - A couple of questions...

Hi Simon,

The PC doubles up as a media server, hence my pre-sales question regarding it being on 24/7.

Other than that, Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom are probably the most resource hungry apps I use on a daily basis for image editing. I do beta testing for a Media software company, so regularly run their stuff in a virtual machine, which again, typically pushes temps into the high sixties.

Beyond that, it’s mostly just your usual email/web browsing stuff, with some occasional light game playing.

To give an example of real world experience from just this morning, I noticed that Firefox was spinning the CPU at about 14%, constantly, which in turn, was pushing the CPU temps into the 70’s. The culprit was “Amazon assistant” toolbar addon, which has now been removed… For me, Amazon should fix that extension, but the chances of that are slim. I only spotted it because I’m hyper sensitive about temps and CPU demand at the moment so have the monitors on my taskbar. If the monitors weren’t there, I would have carried on in blissful ignorance… would that have caused any long term harm?

I’ve just used the PC as intended, with no fans for a week now, and for the most part, temps are in the low forties, actually, at 39° as I type this, peaking into the high fifties / low sixties when I’m making demands of it.

and his response...

Hi Mark

Thanks for the reply

To be quite honest with you, with what you are doing with the PC it is working exactly as it should. It will get warm just running it as normal but if you were going to do really high intensive CPU tasks the system is going to get very hot indeed. If you had called me for example and said that you are video rendering 10 hours a day 6 days a week I would have said the PC can do it but it will get very hot. I would also said that running a fanless system in this way can lower the life expectancy of the PC so it may be better looking at a Quiet fanned system that would lower the temperatures.

Thankfully however you are not running the PC at high loads for long periods of time so the system will be completely fine

Kind regards
Simon

Yes, he signed off with a smiley face! Thoughts? Notice that he avoided the Firefox/Amazon Assistant question...

[RoderickGI]

I think his response is perfectly reasonable. There is always going to be a compromise between Cool, Quiet, and Life Expectancy in a PC.

He can't really say much about the Firefox/Amazon Assistant. There are always going to be bits of code that don't play nice, and that is just an example. That's why HTPCs and Servers should run minimal "extra" stuff.

My workstation, where all sorts of stuff is installed and high load stuff is run, has a keyboard with a CPU and RAM load display on it. So I can see immediately if something is going crazy, and fix it. On an unattended HTPC, if I had concerns, I would install a temperature monitor that would record a temperature history, and could send me alerts if there was a problem. Just like HD Sentinel does for my hard drives. I'm sure there are such beasts around. Maybe there is one that would even force a shutdown at high enough temperatures.

In terms of life expectancy, how long do you want the PC/CPU to last? I have my workstation set to panic if the temperature goes over 70°C (from memory, T_{CASE MAX} is 67.9°C), and it rarely does because it has variable Noctua fans in it, which run up whenever the temperature rises. That CPU is now seven years old, and I expect it to last another three, if I want it to. If you were hitting the level of thermal throttling every now and then, I would still expect five years out of a modern CPU, unless you were very unlucky, or the cooler wasn't seated properly. But that would be noticed quickly.

Your alternative is to install a fan controller that doesn't turn the fans on until, say, 70°C, then ramps up from there. I like that approach, as it give me peace of mind if ever something does hog the CPU, or I'm working on a hot day and room temperatures get high. Also, maybe your motherboard and BIOS is capable of turning off fans and only starting them at higher temps. I think some are. I use a SilverStone 1-to-8 PWM Fan Hub to drive four 80mm and two 120mm fans off the one properly motherboard controlled CPU fan header in my workstation. My motherboard can't turn off the CPU fan, but it can run it pretty slow at low temperatures, so the PC is mostly pretty quiet.

Completely fanless is a great aim, but I reckon "No fans running, most of the time" is a better solution in the long run.

[astromo]

On an unattended HTPC, if I had concerns, I would install a temperature monitor that would record a temperature history, and could send me alerts if there was a problem. Just like HD Sentinel does for my hard drives. I'm sure there are such beasts around. Maybe there is one that would even force a shutdown at high enough temperatures.

Try CoreTemp as one alternative. This is what I use. It's got various options to alarm, log, shut down or sleep when CPU temps or power reaches a given setpoint for a user configurable time period.

I'm not at home, but I'm sure it is an Intel i7 7th generation kaby lake going at 4.2 GHz... something like that anyway.

From the QPC website link you provided, here are the CPU alternatives they offer:

Processor
3.5GHz Intel 7th Gen Pentium G4560 54W HD 610 3MB Dual Core CPU
2.9GHz Intel 7th Gen Pentium G4560T 35W HD 610 3MB Dual Core CPU
3.4GHz Intel 7th Gen Core i3 7100T 35W HD 630 3MB Dual Core CPU
3.9GHz Intel 6th Gen Core i3 6320 47W HD 530 4MB Dual Core CPU
4.1GHz Intel 7th Gen Core i3 7320 65W HD 630 4MB Dual Core CPU
3.5GHz Intel 7th Gen Core i5 7600 65W HD 630 6MB Quad Core CPU
2.8GHz Intel 7th Gen Core i5 7600T 35W HD 630 6MB Quad Core CPU
3.8GHz Intel 7th Gen Core i5 7600K 91W HD 630 6MB Quad Core CPU
3.6GHz Intel 7th Gen Core i7 7700 65W HD 630 8MB Quad Core CPU
2.9GHz Intel 7th Gen Core i7 7700T 35W HD 630 8MB Quad Core CPU
4.2GHz Intel 7th Gen Core i7 7700K 91W HD 630 8MB Quad Core CPU

So, from the available info, it looks like you've opted for the 91W 7700K (in red). Based on bitter, personal experience of cooking a CPU/MoBo in a fanless setup fitted with a moderately powered CPU, I now specifically seek out the "T" spec Intel CPUs. I had the joy of trying to work out why my PC was seemingly randomly shutting down and doing weird things. It still ran though and the other kit in the case (e.g. hard drives) didn't seem to be troubled.

So, I would have spec'd the 35W 7700T unit (indicated in blue for the i7 spec) for your build so there's inherent "throttling" on the chip before the MoBo needs to get involved. My use profile avoids needing a seriously fast CPU speed and from what I can make out you're in pretty well the same boat. With the unit you've sourced, if you want hard core graphics capability then QPC offer various fanless graphics cards - so that would be a good way to go.

Fanless coolers do their best but in my experience, you're better off giving them the prospect of the easiest life possible from the get-go as indicated from my previous comments. Since applying that build philosophy, I've had (as far as I can tell) reliable operation.

[BryanC]

The 65W Ryzen 1700 is really enticing me for a similar build once the AM4 mini-ITX boards are out (although I plan to use an AIO with a Noctua fan, because a decent fanless heatsink is practically the size of my case). I have a similar setup now with an i5-3570K but it still pushes my Seasonic PSU just hard enough for its fan to kick in which is definitely audible. If I can knock a few more watts off I think the problem will remedy itself. 16 threads will be fun for on-the-fly conversions, I will be able to do an entire album in one swoop.

[marko]

Nice

A quick update from my end...

The whole "Firefox/Amazon Assistant" question was really just "if I hadn't removed it, all the while Firefox was running (not unusual for it to be running for days on end) the CPU would be hitting temps well into the seventies... how bad is that, or not?"

Otherwise, in normal usage, temps are high thirties/low forties, sometimes spiking into the sixties. When it spikes, the drop back to 40° is virtually instantaneous. As long as those aren't dangerous temps, I'm actually very pleased.

I guess the issue throughout this thread is that while I understand that "cooler is better" I've really no idea how detrimental, or not, running constantly at 40° is...

If it's constantly running at 90°, life expectancy will be low, I get this. Is it all relative? So, the lower the average temps, the longer it will last, from zero all the way up to 100, or is there tipping point where, if temps are regularly above a certain point, life expectancy will deteriorate, but below it, and all will be cushty?

At the moment, I'm happy in my blissful ignorance

-marko

[astromo]

Otherwise, in normal usage, temps are high thirties/low forties, sometimes spiking into the sixties. When it spikes, the drop back to 40° is virtually instantaneous. As long as those aren't dangerous temps, I'm actually very pleased.

I guess the issue throughout this thread is that while I understand that "cooler is better" I've really no idea how detrimental, or not, running constantly at 40° is...At the moment, I'm happy in my blissful ignorance

-marko

Well, if this is your CPU:
http://ark.intel.com/products/97129/Intel-Core-i7-7700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_50-GHz
Then its specs quote a T_junction of 100°C, where:

T_JUNCTION

Junction Temperature is the maximum temperature allowed at the processor die.

So, the unit is capable of running quite hot and if you're cruising under normal load at 40°C, then I don't think you need to be too concerned.

[marko]

Thanks astromo, I had kind of latched on to that "Tjunction of 100°C" thing, but more in hope than any kind of certainty

I also wouldn't want it operating that high either. It's mind boggling... I mean, that's hot enough to boil water! To my mind, electrical things flat out shouldn't work at those temps! Impressive engineering really, don't you think?

[astromo]

Whether it's amps or CPUs, I think the best bet with electronics is headroom / margin.

Cheap insurance to  stay well away from the precipice. From experience, a good materials engineer is worth their weight in platinum. I'd expect that's what's happening here. You could probably see a clear upward trend if you mapped Tj vs Time and I'll bet that it will be largely due to improvements in materials engineering. It's embodies my view of what good engineering is about and that is making a design as robust as possible for acceptable cost.

I still would have gone for the "T" spec CPU if it was me (call me gun shy) but from what you've passed on, you really don't have much to worry about - so that's handy to know. The Amazon assistant thing is useful to be aware of. That tip is appreciated.