Benjaminojedi

FX 8350? might want a good cooler though

The silent cube
Pushing passive cooling to the limit
 
 
 
 
The vision
 

 
 
The build

 
The heat

 
 
 
After I could gain experience with my first passive build with a TDP of ~250 watts (http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/342534-finished-full-passive-powerful-workstation-gaming-rig-who-said-it-cant-be-done/) I'm building an even more insane system. It will be the ultimate passive build because it's the best I can achive with the current technology without going absolutely crazy. And with crazy I'm mean something like using two PSUs, more than 50 kg of heat sinks or something along thos lines.
 
The most powerful fanless PSU aviable nowadays is the Enermax Digifanless 550 watts, with a peak power of up to 605 watts (one minute). Under this power envelope I will fitt:
 
- CPU: i7-4790K (90 watts)
- GPU:  2x EVGA GTX 980 SC ACX 2.0 in SLI (380 watts)
- MoBo: Asrock Z97M OC Formula (15 watts)
- RAM: G.Skill Trident X 32GBytes, DDR3-2400 (10 watts)
- SSD 1: Intel 750 PCI-E, 400 GB (25 watts)
- SSD 2: Samsung Evo 512 GB in M.2 format (5 watts)
- HDD 1: 3 TBytes WD Red (10 watts)
 
The HDD can turned on and off with a switch and will only used for back-ups. I'd love to get rid of a HDD, but it's silly to make back-ups on a SSD and it will be hardly ever turned on.
 
As you can see the maximal power draw is around 535 watts and very close to the limit of 550 watts. But in normal operation it's very unlikely to push all components at the same time. For peak power draw I have a buffer of 75 watts, what I can feel comfortable with.
Thankfully the PSU has a very high build quality (it it also very expensive, but never cheap out on the PSU) and I can measure the load and temperature in real time.
EDIT: The measured peak load pulled from the PSU is about 510 watts.
 
Now I made sure the PSU don't blew up, I have to get rid of the heat somehow. The upper temperture limit for me is about 80°C with a max. room temperature of 30°C. As a result I have a temperature difference of 50°C to play with. So it's time for number crunching and it turned out I need three heat sinks of 400x300x84 mm, 12 kg each. So I designed the system around them.
 

 
More renderings:
 

 
The system has a size of 384x384x403 mm. Nearly a perfect cube.
And it will weigh ~50 kg!
 
This time I tried to use less heat pipes. They are fine, but quite expensive. Therefor I mounted the GPU directly to the heat sinks using a copper heat transfer plate.
 
Also I will use peltier elements as a thermoelectric generator by takeing advantage of the Seebeck effect!
I know the efficiency is only ~1%, but it's just for fun. Because of the low heat conductivity I can't mount the elements directly on the CPU/GPU, so I will mount them on the big heat sink on the front (hot side) and cool them with the two smal heat sinks on each side. Therefor I can only expect a smal temperature difference (5 - 10 °C estimated), so I will get an oper circuit voltage of 50 - 300 mV per modul. Since I'm useing cheap 3 euro peltier modules I have no information about the thermoelectric generator characteristics.
But since I'm useing 10 modules and a low power LED needs only ~2 mW (1,8 volt, 1mA) I'm pretty confident I can at least illuminate some LEDs.
When the final measurements shows that I'm able to harvest >= 600 mW, I could even charge my smartphone on a slow rate (5V, 100mA) useing a boost converter.
 
 
Now lets roll out the build log:
 
 
Update 1: Metal and heat sinks arrived
 

 
Update 2: GPU heat transfer plate
 

 
Update 3: GPU 1 assembly
 

 
Update 4: GPU 1 measurement
 

 
Update 5: Estimation thermal generator output power
 

 
Update 6: Energie harvesting efficiency = 0.0005%
 

 
Update 7: CPU block and PCI-E riser
 

 
Update 8: CPU cooler
 

 
Update 9: CPU cooler finally mastered
 

 
Update 10: Don't give up....
 

 
Update 11: Full throttle, no throttling!
 

 
Update 12: Final assembly part 1
 

 
Update 13: Stress test, 500 watts!
 

 
Update 14: Make the heat visible!
 

 
Update 15: Final assembly part 2
 

 
Update 16: Charging the smartphone for free while gaming
 

 
Update 17: Finished! (Lot's of pictures)
 

 
Update 18: <1dBa over the noise floor!
 

 
Update 19: Overclock the CPU
 

 
Update 20: Finishing touches
 
 
 
Update 21: Liquid cristal thermometer!
 
 
 
Update 22: Thank you all!
 
 
 
 
If you liked this build log, you may also like a passive mineral oil cooled PC.
Don't hesitate and look here: The number cruncher

They always shittalk aswell, to the point of being obnoxious..not insulting. Just...obnoxious.

Shhhhh don't say that!  You may get banned for not being Politically Correct or profiling!  They are Eurasian grey goose mic spammers

I honestly couldnt care less if youre a girl gamer or not. its mostly russian csgo players who get on my nerves with all their mic spam