Once heatsinks added in copper heatspreaders (p4) and heatpipes, I think computers have been significantly overcooled in some ways.
ATX does have an exhaust fan by design from the PSU, but putting in an extra fan on the back does help. The front intakes aren't so important I think.
Since you're running a 6600 card with passive cooling, you probably do really need an exhaust fan, I think the passive coolers of the era just about required that.

I personally put in fan controllers so the fans only run as fast as needed. One of the big reasons I wanted to put together a retro PC many years back was to make a PC that could play old games, but quieter 😀
Northwood 2.4 should be quite cool I think? Is that using the stock cooler?

Yes, stock cooler. I wouldn't say that it's quiet. But I also have another stock cooler which sounds the same so I assume they were all like that. I'm just starting to look at what temperatures it runs at.

You will get different answers regarding "acceptable" temperatures. As a rule of thumb I'd say, try to keep your CPU below 55°C under full load and your GPU under 75°C under full load. Close the case, run some stress test, observe the temperatures and system stability. If temperatures stay below these levels, system is stable and noise is acceptable, you are fine. If not, you have several options, including:

Step 1: Replace thermal compound with something modern like Arctic MX-4 and clean heatsinks from dust
Step 2: Add or replace case fans to improve airflow and/or noise level. Intake on the front, exhaust on the rear. Even most old cases usually provide various mounting options for case fans.
Step 2a: Optionally add an aftermarket fan control solution to adjust fan speeds to your needs or have them adjusted automatically.
Step 3: In case GPU temperatures are your problem, mount a small but silent fan directly to your GPU heat sink or get more creative, mounting a case fan in a way that provides good airflow over the heatsink.
Step 4: Replace CPU heatsink with something more beefy. There's an all-copper heatsink for S478 from Thermaltake for example. Replace the stock fan on that thing with something more quiet.
Step 5: If noise levels are too high and quiet fans are not an option, add aftermarket noise insulation to your case.
Step 6: If your power supply only features a single 80mm fan on the rear, consider replacing it with a model that has a 92 or 120mm fan on the bottom as well to improve airflow.

That's basically it.

Currently use stock Intel cooler for my Tualatin 1133.
It's excruciatingly noisy, like a freaking vacuum cleaner.
Came across an unused (unopened) Thermaltake Volcano 7 -- should I expect better results?

Some of this is just a repeat of what gex85 posted, but:

1) Modern thermal compounds.
2) If spacing allows, lazy 120mm fans and shrouds to keep the noise down.
3) Airflow management - both case fans and cable management, also choosing where drives and cards go to benefit from airflow.

I haven't done much on it yet, but I'm hoping to make more shrouds that are sturdier and fit better (I've been cutting and taping plastic sheet, basically). Possibly 3D printed, especially for my PPro boards and things like that. Also anything that tends to run hot. I don't overclock, generally, but I like to keep it quiet and cooler is usually better for electronics.

I found a spot in the front of my Dell XPS R450 for a 120mm fan, but it has to be a slim one.

I keep an eye out for cheap copper heatsinks of various sizes and have been thinking about fabricating brackets, possibly out of thin but relatively rigid twisted wire (I have some aluminum-based pot metal thick bendable wire meant for craft work that has been useful).

tails wrote:

I'm curious to know what CPU/GPU combo you are all running inside your cases and how you keep them cool and quiet. If even quiet at all?

These are my retro-rigs:
3 Retro systems (late 90s to mid 00s) - beige, silver, black

The K6-II is very loud, but it's because of the hard drive. Other than that it has a fairly quiet CPU fan, a passively cooled Voodoo 3000, one intake fan and the exhaust goes through the PSU. Dunno how quiet those fans are, but the hard drive noise really drowns everything anyway. This system is rarely used, so I don't care.

The P4 system is not very quiet, because of the Thermaltake case fans of which there are 3. Fortunately, there is a fan controller which can at least bring the noise down to manageable levels. The CPU fan (AC Super Silent) is silent in comparison, and the 6600GT is also passively cooled.

The C2Q is very quiet (not inaudible, as in - you would hear it in a quiet room, but it's even possible to sleep next to it) - I lucked out there: even after 11 years the 3 case fans have not gone loud, and neither has the one on the Scythe Mine cooler. I've been taking care to select video cards known for their quiet fans, as passive cooling is really no longer an option in anything mid-range or higher.

Other than that I have a modern i7 PC which is also quiet. I feel that there is much more awareness and push towards silent fans these days. Also specifically choose a known quiet GPU (Palit Jetstream) for this one.

tails wrote:

I've got a Northwood P4 2.4 and a passively cooled Nvidia 6600. I've been running it with the side cover off because I really don't know much about how warm it's getting or what's acceptable in there.

Note that it's been established that a closed case with properly set up intake/exhaust air path is actually more likely to provide better cooling than an open case, because of better flow compared to air coming from all directions.

I hate noisy PCs, always have done.

That's the biggest reason why I hardly do any HDDs - if at all possible I use CF or DOM for older machines, SSDs for newer ones.

As for CPU, up to So7 I use passive cooling, for an overclocked K6-3+ I use a big SoA heatsink, but still passively cooled.

Above that you can't completely avoid fans, but I try and keep it quiet, usually by taking a cooling solution from a higher (hotter) archtecture and sticking it on older cooler stuff. My P3-1400S has a Thermaltake SuperOrb (designed for late-model Athlon CPUs with twice the TDP of a Tualatin). By default the SuperOrb is loud, with two high-speed fans. With a mere Tualatin under it, I get away with running just one of the two fans, and that at a lower speed. I also have a Celeron 1400, currently homeless due to lack of suitable board. For that I have a Zalman CNPS6000 big flower/fan-shaped heatsink with big fan on bracket to mount over it. Originally it came with a decently quiet 80mm fan, but I replaced that with a huge, absolutely silent Noctua Redux 120mm fan. It just bathes the whole area in quietly moving air.

Fortunately my retro-tastes don't extend to extreme hothead P4 systems (or indeed GPUs that need a lot of active cooling), so not confronted with what to do with a high-clocked Prescott. I'd probably water-cool a beast like that...

My overclocked K6-3+ has a small period-correct heatsink but with a very quiet Noctua fan. I also use a graphene pad as a thermal interface because I hate messing with thermal paste.

I agree that Pentium MMX doesn't really need active cooling. I have a Pentium MMX 233 that came with Intel's infamous stock cooler. The heatsink is glued to the CPU, and the stock fan sounds like a tiny jet engine. I took the fan off and used the CPU to set up my Super Socket 7 machine, install Windows 98. I also ran a couple of benchmarks including Quake in software mode and the heatsink was barely warm to the touch.

I have a team of humans that take turns every 8 hours blowing their breath on the heatsink directly.

tails wrote:

Yes, stock cooler. I wouldn't say that it's quiet. But I also have another stock cooler which sounds the same so I assume they were all like that. I'm just starting to look at what temperatures it runs at.

Which motherboard are you refering to ? Photo of the setup ?

I built it in a modern case specifically to be able to use modern quiet fans and keep everything inside cool at the same time (also to not slice my hands up any time I'm working in there).

Main retro rig is a dual Pentium III Tyan board with an AGP Quadro FX 4000 SDI that I swapped a 'large' Zalman VGA cooler onto so that it can be cool and not sound like a mini rocketship.

There are brackets for side fan mounts for you video card and 60x60x15mm fans for you video card.
You can attach with thin wire. Just tie onto the video card.

I have some nice cases designed for hot P4's that have an air duct in the door that goes to where the stock CPU heatsink would be so it draws cold air outside of the case. 80mm case fans were common back then and some tend to be noisy.

I was never too picky about cooling fans and heatsinks until the Athlon socket A came around and those needed the aftermarket solid copper heatsinks to keep them cool, or the large aluminum heatsink with a copper slug inside and a huge fan.

Aftermarket IceQ cooling for GPUS like the ATI 9800 were pretty good as long as there was nothing in the way of the cooler.

PARKE wrote:

tails wrote:

Yes, stock cooler. I wouldn't say that it's quiet. But I also have another stock cooler which sounds the same so I assume they were all like that. I'm just starting to look at what temperatures it runs at.

Which motherboard are you refering to ? Photo of the setup ?

MSI 865PE Neo 2. There's room in the case for an inlet and an outlet but those little fans are crazy loud. I'll post some photos.

i have a thermaltake TR2-M1 (or earlier model, it's got a black fan not clear acrylic) that has a terribly loud 80mm fan and rusted screws. anyone know any reccommended fans that i could just slot on top to keep the same heatsink? sure it's not he best, it's aluminium... but the copper based coolers i see dont sell for less than 50 bucks on ebay so i'd rather just fix what i have. it's an athlon xp 2200+ if that helps.

i saw timmy joe tech fella watercooling a socket A cpu in a vid a few weeks ago. reckon he had any custom mounting? one of those AM2/AM3 all-in-one rgb coolers. its a nice idea, to run modern parts to keep it icey cold.

I only deal with socket 3 and below so my noisiest cooler is the PSU fan.
I find anything above socket 370 too young for me. Maybe in 10 years.

dionb wrote:

I hate noisy PCs, always have done.

That's the biggest reason why I hardly do any HDDs - if at all possible I use CF or DOM for older machines, SSDs for newer ones.

I actually like a little bit of crunchy grindey noise coming from the hdd

I usually don't worry about noise on gaming machines. It's hard to make them so loud that it actually bothers me, especially since I'll probably be wearing headphones while in a game.

I don't have a retro gaming PC set up right now, but some of the ones I've done have had an 80mm fan standing up next to the expansion cards. It makes noise but it helps cool the non-CPU components. I've been more motivated to do this when it involves expensive sound cards, high powered older graphics cards, and on a super 7 machine that had a hot 3.3V onboard regulator.
In case it isn't obvious from what I just wrote, my machines almost never have covers on them. Case covers get in the way so I've got them stacked up in a corner somewhere.

I have one old slot-2 PC that's a proprietary HP design. It's cooling includes a hard drive fan top front, a mobo/cards fan bottom front, exhaust fan top rear, and exhaust from the PSU bottom rear. It treats the components well and even though it's pretty loud, I've had no desire to change it. I even close the lid on that one.

On what I'd consider a "quality" build, I believe in keeping hard drive temps in the low 40s. With most 7200rpm drives that requires a fan but only a quiet one. Unfortunately most old cases aren't set up for this.
I'm a little more relaxed about drive cooling with retro machines though, because I don't expect to run them very hard and they don't hold important data. I have several 20-80GB IDE drives that I don't put much value on, so if I'm using those drives then I don't worry much about it.
If I break out one of the bigger IDE drives though, or a really old one, or a SCSI, then I consider those to be more precious.
I love the sound of a manly 7200rpm SCSI drive. 😀 I have one that's quite loud but it's a really early one. The other few I've used have been the best sounding hard drives I ever heard.

Going on a slight tangent, but as it relates to the subject of keeping retro hardware healthy, I like to check voltages on every build with a multimeter before installing any valuable parts on what might be a dodgy system. I also sometimes measure clock frequency on the expansion slots (some POST cards and meters can do that). It's easy to make a mistake and misconfigure something. Sometimes parts are malfunctioning, or there is undocumented, misdocumented, or unclear behavior. It's especially easy to make mistakes now when this older hardware is becoming increasingly alien vs the present day.

Ceiling fan running counter-clockwise for "negative pressure" 🤣

Actually in my win98 rig, got standard cpu P3 cooler + (2) intake (1) exhaust fan setup.
The Voodoo 2's still get kinda toasty.