I have wanted to build a fully passively cooled computer case since I had my first Athlon
Thunderbird 800 MHz. That time the fan noise was amazingly high, and manufacturers didnīt much
care about the noise levels, and didn't offer products for building a quiet PC. Nowadays a quiet PC
is not much of a challenge to build, but totally silent? It would require that there were no
moving parts at all. But of cource there has to be the compromise of a hard-drive. One could
buy a SSD drive, but at least I don't have that kind of money to spend. :)
First of all, I have to apologize to our readers, as I have been extremely lazy writing this
article. This project was well finished in the summer of 2007, and I have even built couple of
computer cases after that. I hope this in partly explains the "old" components used in the
project.
Opteron 170 @ 2,4 GHz
GeForce 6800GT
Asus A8N-VM CSM
Kingston 400 MHz DDR ECC
Seagate Barracuda 320 GB
Getting started
Through a friend of a friend, I got my hands on some very heavy-duty heatsinks, so I was ready
to start building.
When designing passive cooling, first thing you have to have is lots of surface area to dissipate
the heat that a modern computer produces. The second thing to take into account is the airflow.
Without fans, the airflow rests solely on convection that is a very low force. This means
that the places the air must go, must be open, and clear of obstacles. Convection means that hot air
goes up. This would suggest that the heatsinks are lined vertically. This in turn, suggests that the
case be modeled like a tower.
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