Connecting heatsinks together (help needed)

[Arinoth]

Alright, so I have this small HTPC that I have in my posession after purchasing to find the little 40mm fan that's mounted to the case seems to get rather loud when its getting heavily loaded. I haven't checked to see if it does this when it's playing video back, but right now I'm thinking it may be a little loud for my liking.

This got me thinking as to perhaps connecting the heatsinks on the motherboard covering the north/southbridge and the gpu/cpu to the metal case enclosing it. I was wondering if there was a way to do this so that it's not something that's permanent (as in I'll be able to open/close the case) and if it would help dissipate the heat leading this fan to become a lot quieter.

[JD]

Is the case far away from the heatsinks? If not, then you could likely just use a thermal pad or even thermal paste.

The simplest way I can imagine is getting a large chunk of aluminum or copper and just securing it to the chips and making it tall enough to touch the case.

More difficult approach would be to make your own heatpipe design to connect from the chip to the case.

Either way though, unless the case is made of some rather thick aluminum, ideally with some ridges to future increase surface area, I don't think it'll be overly effective. You'd need something like the case used for this: Fanless Embedded Computer : MXE-5300 Series Powerful 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Fanless Embedded Computer or this: Zalman TNN-300 Fanless PC Enclosure System | silentpcreview.com

[stoanee]

Mod case to accept larger quieter fan?

[Arinoth]

Well its a mini-rackmount case which probably has an inch or two at max clearance from the heatsink to the case. I

don't have the tools to make the case able to handle a larger fan, as the only opening it has its for the 40 or maybe its 80mm fan.

Here's a picture of it using B1's BST selling photo

[stoanee]

Scythe Mini-KAZE ULTRA 40mm x 20mm Silent Mini Fan at Memory Express ???

[Arinoth]

Hmm that would be perfect, I'd just need to make sure I have the depth clearance for it (which I should)

[ilya]

Originally Posted by Arinoth

Hmm that would be perfect, I'd just need to make sure I have the depth clearance for it (which I should)

Scythe makes a slimmer version of the same fan. 40x40x10mm

[Arinoth]

OH I know, I've never had good luck with decent air flow 40x40x10mm fans, didn't know (or forgot) there was a quiet 20mm option.