Is it OK to cool these cpu's passively?

[Nowhere]

I'm trying to do my soon-to-be-server as quiet as possible. And I wonder if I can completely remove fans, leaving quite large (as you can see on photo where I deattached one fan) radiators. The cpu's are two p2 266 on newer 0,25um Deshutes core. What do you think about this idea?

p.s. The real question is perhaps - does p2 have protection from overheating so it won't damage itself/mobo permanently? (if it will just become unstable it's not a big deal, I can always mount the fans back...)

[Technoid]

Pentium 2 cpu's has no overheat protection and I don't recomend running them without fan's.

you could mount a 120mm fan to blow onto both heatsinks that way getting lower noise.....

[Kurt]

Actually they do run quite fine without a fan, only not with the Intel original heatsink...they still require a decent airflow.

As Technoid said, a big+low speed fan should do the trick nicely for heat dissipation and low noise.

[Kooldino]

^^^^

[dZeus]

http://processorfinder.intel.com/scripts/details.asp?sSpec=SL2W7&ProcFam=47&PkgType=ALL&SysBusSpd=ALL&CorSpd=ALL

the 65 degrees C thermal spec seems reasonably low but it might work out with a large fan somewhere near those heatsinks...
look into undervolting them if possible, that should help a lot as long as they operate stable (though since they're some of the lowest speed-grade Deshutes cores, I suppose they're some undervolting potential in them )

[Nowhere]

Thanks for informing/warning me that my hopes for completely fanless cooling won't come true...

Unfortunatelly 120mm fans are rarity here... Oh well, 92mm will do I guess
And I must check whether Asus P2L97DS has any sort of voltage regulation (somehow I doubt it...but we'll see)

[dZeus]

you can change the VID pins to request 1.9 Vcore instead of the default 2.0 and use motherboard monitor to check if the voltage supplied changes... that is, if it has any hardware monitor sensor (I suppose it does?)

[Evildead666]

I love the way there are large heatsinks, and those small, blatantly loud cpu fans...they must make a huge whine when they run...

If you want temperature control/readings you might want to invest in one of those 51/4 bay temp probe things. They have usually 2 or 3 temp probes, which you could use to check the temps of each chip, in normal loud mode, and then afterwards with a larger, slower rpm fan...and would give you some peace of mind..

[Nowhere]

@dZeus: VID pins? (and yes, I can see the voltages in bios)

@Evildead: It's not that bad, they are actually quite silent (Papst) but the type of the noise is little irritating (high). And unfortunately the idea with temperature reading is useless for me - it's all done on very tight budget (and those 5 1/4 bay things are expensive here AFAIK...)

[dZeus]

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/19981215/sl2w8-06.html

for an english page on which pins on the slot-1 interface are for Voltage ID.

http://www.ixbt.com/cpu/voltage.html for a table on which VID combination will get you to 1.9 VCore.

wether you'll be able to get 1.9 VCore all depends on wether the voltage regulator IC on your motherboard can provide the voltage (try to google for the numbers that are printed on the IC packaging of the voltage regulator IC)

[Nowhere]

Thanks a lot, this looks like something doable to me
Just one thing: I have no idea which thing on the mobo is the voltage regulator...(but I guess nothing bad to mobo will happen if it doesn't support 1,9V and I'll set 1,9 on VID pins?)

[dZeus]

nah nothing bad will happen most likely, unless the voltage regulator IC will misinterpreted the VID request and output a waaayy too high voltage to the CPU, which might damage it. Though I doubt it will.. most likely it'll just supply the lowest voltage it can.

The voltage regulator IC most often is quite small in size, and often in the neighbourhood of the SLOT-1 connector (the one on my P3 boards had 28 pins if I remember correctly). You can check around which IC is the voltage regulator by searching in google for the markings on some of the ICs you suspect it might be... you'll probably get hits which will give a hint to what function the IC does that you're searching google with.

[Nowhere]

OK, I've found it in the first try - hip6004acb
And I've found already some pdf about it with all VID pins even for as low as 1,3V voltage So I guess it supports it...
Thanks a lot for help, dZeus!

[dZeus]

np. Carefull with the modding! I recommend isolating the contact pad of the correct VID pins on the cpu slot-1 connector with some adhesive tape and soldering the slot-1 VID connector pins on the bottom side of the motherboard of the with a wire to ground (I think that'll be the signals for 'open' and 'close' VID signals, check google a bit more to be sure).

You sure are lucky if it goes all the way down to 1.3 VCore! most Slot-1 P2-P3 boards only do 2.0 - 2.8 Vcore since that's what all CPUs from that era used before 0.18 coppermine core afaik.