In my experience with AS5 within a couple of days the temperatures will start to level out, but I've not had any experience with passive setups. Fanless systems are nice in theory, but you really need something like a 20w TDP for it to actually work on something as big as an entire system (GPUs can have a higher TDP but GPUs are designed to be able to withstand 100°C temperatures) but you are going to need to have some airflow, passive graphics cards and CPU coolers still depend on case fans. There are low noise fans as Mime pointed out, and there are high efficiency quiet CPU coolers as well, such as the Corsair H60. As for that ticking noise, that sounds like the hard drive as it spins around.

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Crosshair IV Formula, Phenom II x4 965 w/ Corsair H60, 8 GiB OCZ Platinum DDR3 1600, XFX HD 7970 Ghz, 512GB Vertex 4, 256GB Vector, 240GB Agility 3, Creative X-Fi Titanium w/ Creative Gigaworks S750, SeaSonic X750, HP ZR2440w, Win 7 Ultimate x64

I'm basically trying to create a similar system to:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-Demonstrates-Fanless-A10-5700K-Trinity-System-296214.shtml

My components are:

CPU: AMD A10-5700
MB: ASUS F2A85-M
RAM: Corsair CML16GX3M4A2133C11B
SSD: Plextor M3 128 GB
HDD: Western Digital WD15EARS
ODD: Sony Optiarc BD-5850H
PSU: PicoPSU 160-XT + FSP 150-AHBN1

I'm using Arctic Silver 5 as thermal paste.

No software is yet installed as I have just put the system together. First thing I did was check out how good fanless cooling is working in the bios. I was in for a shock: even just idling in the bios screen displaying the CPU temperature the temperature gradually creeps up to between 75 and 80 degrees celsius (167-176 fahrenheit) in about an hour. The case gets really hot too, touchable, but too hot to keep your hand on it.

I have also contacted streacom to ask for their input, they asked for whether I applied thermal paste on specific sections, which I did and asked me to take pictures. These pictures can be found here (sorry, crappy phone cam):

http://www.magicforums.nl/pi_uploads/Streacom/

I've already removed and readded thermal paste to the CPU, but this had no effect. I hear a very faint ticking noise listening to the area of the CPU with all other devices disconnected.

I highly doubt it, but are these normal temperatures for when just looking at this screen in the bios? If not, what can I try to identify the cause of this issue?

Thanks!

Edited: 10/24/2012 at 05:27 PM by pi

That your case is getting toasty means that your heatsink actually is pulling the heat away from your chip though the heat pipes and into your case, so that part is a good sign.  For a CPU with a 65W TDP and fanless cooling... yeah, it might just be that hot.

If you want to remain fanless... then bigger heatsinks and/or more heat pipes are really the only choice you've got.  If you don't mind putting a fan in there, then you can get a 120mm Noiseblocker which are rated at less than 6 decibels.  I'm such a freak about noise, Noiseblockers are the only fans I'll buy these days.  Even just a little airflow often helps a lot more than having none at all.

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Do not meddle in the affairs of archers, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
Post Count: +8510
Troll Hunter

The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.

There is no room for extra fans, heatpipes or cooling. The entire case should act as a big heatsink and is rated for up to 95W TDP (65W TDP recommended). You can find more info here:

http://www.streacom.com/products/fc5-evo-fanless-chassis/

Room temperature I don't expect to be a big part of it, but I wouldn't try putting a 95W CPU in there without any airflow, that's for sure.

I also wouldn't expect the whole case to "act like" a heatsink, but really just that one panel at the top where the heat pipes attach to it.  Heat will naturally bleed away from that panel into the rest of the case, but I wouldn't expect that to have much effect on the temperature of your CPU.

65 watts is a significant amount of heat to handle without airflow.  It's certainly doable, but it'll take some doing if you want an everyday PC out of it instead of a one time demo showpiece.

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Do not meddle in the affairs of archers, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
Post Count: +8510
Troll Hunter

The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.

Edited: 10/24/2012 at 06:15 PM by Mime

I know that AS5 has a 200 hour cure time before it operates at it's peak.  I remember reading something about running it at load then powering it off for 30 or so minutes then turn it back on.....back and forth to assit with curing.  Maybe you just have to give it some time.  Do you have any airflow around the case?  Heat has to taken away from the heatsink somehow.

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The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.
Requiescat In Pace AMD Processor Forums | Member since: 1/19/2009 | Post count: 4142
Please don't PM me with questions, instead create a thread so that everyone can assist and benefit from the knowledge provided. Thanks in advance!

I did figure 95W TDP was pushing it and went for the 65W TDP instead. I did e-mail with Streacom beforehand and they even said that 125W TDP was possible, though they didn't want to officially claim that. 65W TDP though would not be a problem at all according to them.

Actually the side, top, bottom and front of the case heat up. The other side remains cold to the touch, but that's obviously too far away.

I think the cure time might indeed be the culprit. I did read that there might be a significant difference after the cure time, however what I did not realise at first was that there are 3 surfaces with thermal paste in this setup so the effect might be much larger than normal. (There's the layer between CPU and the heatsink block, than there's the layer between the block and the heatsink pipes and finally the layers between pipes and the case.

As I write this the machine has been running for 2 hours and seems fairly stable at 75 degrees so I might already be starting to see improvements.

@black-zion

Somehow your post shows up before my start post? Time travel . There's no GPU in the setup, the A10-5700 is an APU and I won't be installing an additional one. The hard drive was disconnected when I heard that noise, as was everything but 1 RAM module, the power button and the monitor.