[ggtyh]

I think that my AthlonXP 2100+ with stock fan and heatsink is noisy, so I wonder if it is possible to have an efficient but affordable passive air cooling system (aka, a heatsink) powerful enough to cool my CPU.

Budget being tight, and me not being that much of an overclocker, I'm not interested into WaterCooling.

Am i asking for the moon???

[Cuervo]

I agree. The fan noise with most high-end AMD/Intel CPUs is getting loud and even with that noise it still is hot in the room.

I'm no expert in cooling but I don't think there is a passive cooling solution for these CPUs that more effective with less noise. Now when you add that you have no buget you can't even get into H20 solutions.

[ggtyh]

I've seen those Peltier cells, wich are little pieces that produce cold. Those gizmos seem interesting, if it can be used all alone, with no other devices other than the fixtures and protections...

[MSNwar]

I would not recommend Peltier cells ggtyh. All the cell really does is transfer the heat from the CPU side to the heat sink side and that heat sink has to be cooled by a fan. If the fan fails the heat sink will have no cooling and you will end up with a fried CPU in the worse case scenerio. Besides, It takes a big/loud fan to cool that heat sink. Kind of defeats the purpose of reducing noise. Yes, they are cheap, but a risky solution.

Short of a watercooler I would put my money on a high quality roller bearing fan.