Go Silent With Massive Fanless CPU Heatsinks

There is always an endless selection of accessories at Computex, it's sometimes difficult to weed through all the devices.

We did however stumble onto a selection of heatsinks that were passive but still impressive. Thermalright took the spotlight in terms of silent cooling this year--we think they did this last year too. The company showed off several big--literally--passive CPU heatsinks that we found were quite impressive.

Initially we felt that passive heatsinks were definitely not the right solution for those wanting to overclocking their CPUs. This makes sense because overclocking will demand something active if cooling by air, and liquid cooling for better results. Despite this, representatives from Thermalright claim that its heatsinks are so efficient, you can still overclock your processor. While we think this claim is true, the overclocking results you can get from a passive air cooling solution will be much more limited than what an active solution can deliver.

The heatsinks themselves are massive and quite heavy. If you plan to use these solutions in a tower case, make sure the heatsinks are secured tightly. At this point, the usual retention mechanism already applies a great deal of pressure to the motherboard, and so having the heatsinks essentially hanging on their side in a tower case, makes even for a more risky scenario.

Where do we see these working out best? In HTPCs that lay horizontally--and most do. This way, you'll get a silent cooling solution that won't put strain on your motherboard.