Can Atom D525 cpu be run without a fan?

[tboooe]

I've been using an old Acer Aspire Revo R3700 htpc as my control pc in my 2 pc setup. Since I don't convert to dsd or do room correction this little pc does everything I need. I contemplated building a CAPS to replace this so I can tweak more things. However before I go that route I want to mess around with this old htpc and experiment a bit. One thing I want to try is removing the fan. Even though it is actually very quiet I want to see if removing it will help reduce any electrical noise in my system.

 

So does anyone know if an Atom cpu can be run without a fan? If so, do I need to make any provisions? The case its in right now is plastic so I don't think adding heat pipes will do any good. Are there other options for passive cooling if I need it?

[Audio_ELF]

There are (were) several fanless D525 motherboards available so yes, given a suitable heat sink it should work.

[tboooe]

Thank You for the reply. My problem is how to decide what a suitable heat sink is? I really don't want to do trial and error because an error will most likely result in me frying the cpu.

[iago]

Your processor will not get fried, it goes into halt state when the temperature exceeds a certain limit. On some main boards you can even adjust this temperature limit.

 

What are the dimensions of the heat sink underneath the processor fan? And could you leave the top off the plastic enclosure? Your processor has a TDP of 13W. I'm running a J1800 processor with 10W TDP with the built-in heat sink of probably 90x90 mm (or 3.5 in) in an unventilated enclosure without any problems. Power management is set to 'performance'.

[tboooe]

Thank you. It looks like the built in heatsink (its actually just a flat piece of metal with some small fins) underneath the fan is about half the size of an SSD, Yes, I can definitely remove the top cover as you can see of a similar HTPC below. Maybe I can get away with adding a heatsink on top the original one?

 

Here is a pic of the Nvidia GPU and Atom CPU

 

Here is a pic of the heatsink for both

 

Here is image with the heatsink and fan

 

 

 

Your processor will not get fried, it goes into halt state when the temperature exceeds a certain limit. On some main boards you can even adjust this temperature limit.

 

What are the dimensions of the heat sink underneath the processor fan? And could you leave the top off the plastic enclosure? Your processor has a TDP of 13W. I'm running a J1800 processor with 10W TDP with the built-in heat sink of probably 90x90 mm (or 3.5 in) in an unventilated enclosure without any problems. Power management is set to 'performance'.

[iago]

Run it without the fan & the top removed. The BIOS should have an option to monitor system parameters, including processor and ambient temperature. If this gets too hot, add an external heat sink - since you have a (nearly) flat surface, this should be fairly easy. The maximum junction temperature for this processor is 100 °C.

[tboooe]

Well I took off the cover and disconnected the fan. Everything seemed to work with the CPU usage around 3% when streaming music which is normal. For some reason the amount of power the HTPC drew increased by almost 10-15W which at 19V is 0.5-0.75A. I would think without the fan the power consumption would decrease. The GPU and CPU also got very hot. The weird thing is, when I plugged the fan back in, the power consumption dropped back down to its normal level. The fan initially ran at maximum speed which I have never heard before. After about 2-3 mins, the fan speed dropped to its normal level which I can only hear when I am about 6" away.

 

I am going to have to experiment a bit more and monitor the temps. I am perplexed why the power consumption increased without the fan.

[iago]

That is a result I would not have expected; but 10-15W in addition to the normal power consumption is a bit much for the small heat sink.

 

I just browsed the processor's data sheet, but there is nothing in there which would explain the behaviour you observed. So probably no chance after all to run this device without it's accustomed fan.