I rejuvenated an old desktop, and found it was still a fine machine but way too noisy. I’d replaced the motherboard awhile back, with a stock Celeron for CPU…and Intel’s heat sink/fan was like a small jet plane. So I sprung for the latest lovely Copper device from Zalman (CNPS7000B-Cu), folks who make really smart and *quiet* CPU coolers.
Getting the cooler on was tricky because the dimensions were pretty tight inside the case (a Lian Li Aluminum tower) with the PSU close up against the CPU — uggh. But after futzing with little screws and little screwdrivers, it was in.
The amazing thing was not that the new unit was so much quieter — but it was also a much better cooler. Using MBM (Motherboard Monitor) I confirmed that the CPU was running a few degrees cooler Celsius. This is a Celeron 2.4 GHz that with the stock cooler was around 38 – 40, but with the Zalman dropped to 34. And that was with the fan turned all the way down to silent mode.
Although my motherboard (a Gigabyte 845GVM-RZ) isn’t explicitly listed in the MBM config, it had the same sensor chips as other Gigabyte boards and those defs worked.
Very satisfying to make your computer run cooler and quieter.
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