System Components
AMD Platform: Asus Crosshair
The Asus Crosshair motherboard was designed for the true enthusiast and hardcore gamer. It is based on Nvidia’s nForce 590 SLI chipset, and works with all available Socket AM2 processors, whether you pick a little Sempron or a high-end Athlon 64 X2. With only a BIOS update, it will also be able to work with the next-generation Phenom X4 quad core and Phenom X2 dual core processors, once they arrive on the market.
The board offers two x16 PCI Express slots for dual Nvidia SLI graphics, three 32-bit PCI slots for legacy cards, four DIMM slots for DDR2-800 memory, and six SATA/300 ports with support for Native Command Queuing (NCQ), RAID and eSATA. It also provides an 8-channel HD audio codec with digital outputs, and additional features such as jack sensing and a noise filter, dual Gigabit Ethernet, two Firewire ports (IEEE-1394a) and a plethora of accessories and overclocking options. A huge heat pipe solution makes sure that chipset components and voltage regulators are properly cooled at all times. Asus also adds a little fan that can be used to actively cool the Northbridge. The LCD Poster is a little status display that can be found in the middle of the connector panel.
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Potential fan failure is a good reason to use a push/pull fan set up on a tower CPU cooler.
I've yet to have a CPU fan fail as I've always bought quality fans with ball bearings, but if you use sleeve bearing fans, or have a problem with dust then the fans is a lot more likely to fail.
This is very interesting. I am suprised that the Athlon BE series does not run cooler than the Pentium DC.
All of this begs the question - If I want to build a system with decent performance (read: modern dual core CPU), but I want it completely silent, which CPU, and which heatsink would I have to buy?
I am presuming that a 3rd party heatsink might provide enough cooling to enable some of these CPUs to run without a fan without throttling.