Cheapest narrow ilm heatsink/fan? Can I use the passive heatsink only?

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sofakng

Member
Apr 27, 2011
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I've just purchased a Supermicro X9DRi-F with 2x E5-2620 and it includes passive heatsinks but I've read that they get very warm?

I was going to get a cheap Arctic 12 cooler ($12) but it looks like it won't fit narrow ilm. The cheapest narrow ilm heatsink run about $40 which is quite a bit more expensive (especially since I need two).

1) Will the passive heatsinks work well enough? Do I need fans mounted in any certain place in my case?
2) Are there any "cheap" narrow ilm heatsink/fans or is anybody selling any?
 

nthu9280

Well-Known Member
Feb 3, 2016
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San Antonio, TX
Are you putting this in a pedestal / desktop type case or rack mount chassis? Since these are lower TDP CPUs you should be fine even with passive heat sinks as long as there is sufficient air flow in the case.
 

sofakng

Member
Apr 27, 2011
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Sorry, I suppose that's important to know!

I'm using a Norco 4220 (4U) case (filled with HDDs).

Also, these (E5-2620) appear to be 95 W. How big of a CPU can I go with passive cooling and that case do you think?
 

itronin

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2018
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Denver, Colorado
YMMV based on how you have your 4220 set up, # of drives, # of cards,
Edit: and your memory configuration, etc. etc. etc.

I'm Assuming your fans are blowing front to back:

How many hard drives do you have installed?
The fan wall in the 4220 should be drawing air in from the front to to the motherboard try and cooling the drives.
# of drives and kind, and how heavily used at peak will give you an idea of the air temp before it hits the cpu's coolers.
I know the chassis sides of my 4220 can get pretty warm with all the drives working.

Are you using the stock fans in the Norco 4220 or something else?
In my 4220 I am using these Noctua 's in the fall wall.
Are your fans pwm controlled or just wired straight to power?
I have dual 80mm Noctuas at the back.

What cards do you have installed in the slots? the cards will boost the heat inside the chassis some before the hot
air in the card bay area is expelled by the fan wall.

I have the SM 2U dynatrons with copper heatsinks and I did test it using dual E5-2630lv2's with the screamers removed.
I didn't have a thermometer but I can tell you the heatsinks were very very warm.
The cpu's reported between 50c low utilization and ~60c peak which is pretty hot for this CPU (IMO).
My fan wall is pwm controlled and it was cranking during the testing.
In this test I had 128GB lr dimms, the onboard 2008 enabled, an HP expander, a connectx-3 dual 10gbe, and flashed Perc H310, 4 x 1GB SSD's 2x 100GB SSD and 20 x 8TB SAS spinners. the air coming out of the back was also very very warm.

I decided it was too hot and the noise reduction I had from them being passively cooled was outweighed by the increased fan wall noise. I put the Dynatron fans back on - everything seemed a lot happier.

I'm swapping out the 2630's for 2670's so I anticipate the dynatrons will probably be working a bit more than they were.
 
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nthu9280

Well-Known Member
Feb 3, 2016
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San Antonio, TX
I've rigged 60 mm fans like the ones on dynatron / SM 2U active heatsinks with the fan screws to the passive heat sinks . The screws are just held by the friction/tension between the fins till found the active ones at a reasonable price.
 

w0mbl3

Member
Aug 13, 2013
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Sydney, Oz
If you own any Noctua coolers and still have the original receipt, then they'll honour their promise to provide other mount plates for free. I got them to ship me a set of narrow ILM mounting brackets for my old Noctua NH12 for free (I looked up the part numbers for the brackets to make sure they sent me the narrow ILM ones and not square 2011).

Then I just bought a single one of the newer 12cm noctua's which included the ILM brackets.
 

s0lid

Active Member
Feb 25, 2013
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Tampere, Finland
I think I've gotten mounting hardware from Noctua even without receipts by sending a image that has the motherboard, cooler and post-it with "PSK" in it. My oldest Noctua cooler must be atleast 10 years now and I've still gotten new mounting hardware for it when ever I've asked.