"AJ" wrote:


I had heard that the Parhelia was hot but the 100, 200, G400MAX (modified
with a Passive Heatsink) G450PCI, G400PCI and the P650 I have are all
passive cooled and none of the PCs they are installed in have anything
apart from the standard CPU fan and PSU heatsink fan. All are in use and
many run all day/all year without a problem.

Well did you every open up the case and touch the heatsink or the card directly
after it's been on awhile? My G450 PCI is almost too hot to touch. I was
considering getting a P650 card (passively cooled also) but that won't get me
independent triple head display (not that I have 3 monitors anymore now anyway).


Most of My CPUs get too hot to touch as well but if they are not crashing
they are working just fine by my standards. There is some argument to
cooling HDs due to the bearings or capacitors due to the electrolyte but
little to show any advantage to running a bit of silicon at 40c instead of
60c. The silicon will last for years anyway regardless of temp.

I like using the PCs I build, I have been building them from the days of
the first Z80 I soldered together and even went through the super cooling 8
fans on an Overclocked Celeron 333 stage. Nowadays I just want quiet, guess
I am getting old :-)

As an aside all the machines run @home projects so are running at 100% all
the time they are on.

Andy