Get one of those Startech S370 coolers and stick a Noctua on it? That's what I've done and I can barely hear the small fan from inside the case

Or get a large late-era SoA heatsink and simply don't add a fan. Something like a Spire Falconrock/Whisperrock would do the trick. Just case airflow should be enough to keep pretty much any So370 CPU cool.

muon wrote on 2020-06-21, 13:54:

Any suggestions?

That's not "period correct" thinking 🤣.

Arctic Copper Silent 3 is pretty good if you can find one.

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-06-21, 14:50:

Get one of those Startech S370 coolers and stick a Noctua on it? That's what I've done and I can barely hear the small fan from inside the case

Startech S370 with Copper Heatsink

with

NF-A6x25 FLX

The copper Startech cooler with a noctua fan will work fine, it's not exactly cheap though, at about $35 for both combined. But trust me, you will want to replace the stock fan, since that one is obnoxiously loud, even if slowed down by running it at a lower voltage. I prefer to use Startech's socket A coolers, which are aluminium but also taller, so they provide similar if not better performance than their tiny copper socket 7/370 coolers. And they use a larger fan, which is already less noisy at stock and can be made pretty quiet if run at 7V or 5V. If you're okay with its noise profile at 5V, it makes it a much cheaper option at about $12.

But if your board has the space around the socket to use a 3 hole attachment clip, then the best option is to use a larger socket 462 cooler, something like the Spire WhisperRock (or its copies) that another use already mentioned. Those could even be used passively, though I'd add a fan at 5V just in case. Basically, if you want silence, it's better to look at socket 462 coolers; they're designed to handle a much higher heat load and almost always use larger fans, so they can be made quieter more easily. Only issue is compatibility, since a lot of socket 370 boards have capacitors annoyingly close to the socket, sometimes blocking the attachment clip or other times blocking the cooler itself.

Garrett W wrote on 2020-06-21, 15:56:

Arctic Copper Silent 3 is pretty good if you can find one.

This. Or get a stock AMD sA heatsink with copper base, it should work perfectly fine for any s370 CPU.
Often you can get good results by combining a heatsink and fan from whatever resource as s370 CPUs aren't that demanding when it comes to having adequate cooling, provided one doesn't start out with some crappy old Pentium 1 heatsink or something 😜

I would get a simple star tech CPU cooler. But don’t get one of those round “tornado” type because they are loud from my experience.

I'd recommend Just getting a Noctua NF-A8 ULN (or a similar larger model) and yoloying it to any heatsink with a suitable surface you can find.

In my case it's a standard Intel box aluminum heatsink and some rubber bands. Works perfectly, complete silence and temps under 46 °C for ~30W overclocked CPU.

Sticking to commercial factory options in 2020 is cute and all, but there were no truly silent AND period-correct Socket 370/Socket A coolers available. IMHO, it's better to just pick a side and go full on.