I have a passive cooled core2duo at home as a home server. And a passive cooled media center. together with SSD, that means 100% silent systems. Which is awesome.
Core 2 Duo for a server box that is probably sitting idle half the time (at least)? Passive cooling or no, that is wasting a ton of energy. Why not use an Atom/Brazos based box. Those things are practically designed for creating always-on, silent, low-volume, sits-idle-90%-of-the-time boxes.
It is probably a hand-me-down thing. It would cost more energy-money units to replace it with something that consumes only probably 20 watts less. That's only 20 bucks a year in savings. After 3 years you would save $60, but then again after 3 years there will surely be a new hand-me-down box.
I built a passive-cooled SB HTPC/server rig for myself; in a small case (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8... It works fine, but whenever I Prime or encode, it starts running this throttling cycle: whenever the CPU heat reaches 60C (!), it drops the voltage and clocks automatically to cut down the heat.
In a way it's kind of smart - for short jobs and regular use, it'll run superfast with turbo and all, but anything longer and more intensive, it'll run in sort of a "max-heat-limited", "pulse-width-modulated" mode to do as much as it can within the parameters of the cooling solution. I bet if I add a slow fan on it, it would throttle far less...
That said, I find it particularly annoying that this throttle would not let the CPU heat reach 85C or something... my passive Clarkdale rig doesn't do this heavy throttling, and in Prime reaches a toasty, sustainable 88C but still runs at regular clock speeds.
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davepermen - Tuesday, May 31, 2011 - link
I have a passive cooled core2duo at home as a home server. And a passive cooled media center. together with SSD, that means 100% silent systems. Which is awesome.rs2 - Tuesday, May 31, 2011 - link
Core 2 Duo for a server box that is probably sitting idle half the time (at least)? Passive cooling or no, that is wasting a ton of energy. Why not use an Atom/Brazos based box. Those things are practically designed for creating always-on, silent, low-volume, sits-idle-90%-of-the-time boxes.Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - link
It is probably a hand-me-down thing. It would cost more energy-money units to replace it with something that consumes only probably 20 watts less. That's only 20 bucks a year in savings. After 3 years you would save $60, but then again after 3 years there will surely be a new hand-me-down box.Mumrik - Tuesday, May 31, 2011 - link
It may be passive, but it looks huge and heavy for an IMac style design. I'd expect that to make it a hard sell to ordinary people.Spivonious - Tuesday, May 31, 2011 - link
Intel doesn't make complete systems, so I'm sure they'll license their internal design out to OEMs that have better design sense.gevorg - Tuesday, May 31, 2011 - link
What if someone would put a high load on such system for 1-2hrs (i.e. gaming, video encoding, etc). Its unlikely to sustain all that heat passively.hyvonen - Tuesday, May 31, 2011 - link
I built a passive-cooled SB HTPC/server rig for myself; in a small case (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8... It works fine, but whenever I Prime or encode, it starts running this throttling cycle: whenever the CPU heat reaches 60C (!), it drops the voltage and clocks automatically to cut down the heat.In a way it's kind of smart - for short jobs and regular use, it'll run superfast with turbo and all, but anything longer and more intensive, it'll run in sort of a "max-heat-limited", "pulse-width-modulated" mode to do as much as it can within the parameters of the cooling solution. I bet if I add a slow fan on it, it would throttle far less...
That said, I find it particularly annoying that this throttle would not let the CPU heat reach 85C or something... my passive Clarkdale rig doesn't do this heavy throttling, and in Prime reaches a toasty, sustainable 88C but still runs at regular clock speeds.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, June 9, 2011 - link
Apple's Mac Plus was passively cooled. The result? When the RAM was maxed out at 4 MB, the machine would overheat.Apple also revisited fanless cooling with the Cube and certain CRT iMacs. Both had cooling issues.
Completely passive designs are generally a bad idea.