I've got an HP Vectra VL with a P3-450 fanless and it seems perfectly fine without a fan. The heatsink doesn't get overly hot to the touch, and the case is designed with a an exhaust blower to suck the heat from the heatsink out the back of the case.

For peace of mind I'd replace that pigmy rear case exhaust fan with one of the largest size that can be shoehorned there (92 or 120mm).

Make sure it's a 500E (Coppermine) - that'll run a lot cooler.

And if you ever put on anything but 98 on there, get another one!

happycube wrote:

Make sure it's a 500E (Coppermine) - that'll run a lot cooler.

I checked, it's a Katmai 😒

happycube wrote:

And if you ever put on anything but 98 on there, get another one!

Definitely Win98...and yeah, I was thinking about the getting another one for dual, but its pointless for what I'm running on this.

I've got a fanless pentium 2 400 which runs nice. I even overclocked it to 448MHz and I've got absolutely no problems. The psu blows some air on it so I think it helps quite a bit

My setup has 3 fans, two of which are static pressure, above, infront, and left of the CPU.

untill shortly I ran a passive cooled P3 Katmai 500 Mhz with a passive cooler, didn't have to worry about CPU cooling (no fans and no problems cooling it) however the GPU('s) required no less then 3 fans to stay cool 🤣

I have a machine with a PIII 550 MHz Katmai with passive cooling. Worse, the motherboard doesn't have a CPU fan connector. The original case I took it from had a complicated ducted cooling system which couldn't be tranferred to the new case. I just have a powerful case fan blowing air onto it. Hopefully that will be enough to prevent overheating.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/04/28/550mh … as_overheating/

There's been plenty of OEM P3-500 systems that have huge-ass heat sinks on them. It'll be fine

It'll probably be fine, I used to run a Katmai 500 fanless with a rather dinky cooler and it never locked up or anything.

Nowadays, I'd rather have a fan blowing on it though 😀.

If you really want to test its stability, run Prime95 on it. 😉 I'd recommend putting a fan on it if you do though.

Yeh I would just make sure the rear fan is good, maybe a front one blowing cool air towards the CPU as well.

Both my duel Katmai 600 system is passive.
The Prolient 1600 documentation said if upgrading to 500Mhz or more a termal upgrade kit was required, as far as I could tell it was some ducting and a better fan. I simply added 2 80MM fans and works fine

My Asus based system has fans everywhere! but also has a lot of other components generating heat (v2 sli, SCSI, soundcards)
Asus P2B-DS Build

Neither have heat problems

off topic
Win2000 actually makes a real good Win9x gaming rig, and then you can use that 2nd CPU slot just begging to be populated 😉
(I'll fully admit it makes no real world difference, but it gets bonus cool points)

^ Nice cooling solution up there with the Noctuas. Much better to enfilade the Slot 1's than to blow transversely on them as usual.

Provided enough case ventilation, even a Slot 1 Coppermine 733 can (and has) run OK with an (appropiately sized) passive heatsink.

My 550 MHz box mobo has an empty CPU slot but I haven't dared populate it due to the heating issue.

Well, so far it's been fine heat, even under decent load. And having only 2 fans (plus a newer IDE drive), it's nice and quiet!

When spring rolls around, I'll probably beef up the cooling... I do plan to replace the 80mm fan with 120mm (though it is a really good fan and I don't have any good 120's at the moment) and add another fan on the front.

If the motherboard supports it, one could install a socket 370 Pentium III coppermine on a slotket, with a net speed below 550MHz or something (take a 133MHz FSB one). Then set the Slotket to a Voltage request of 1.3 --> Same performance as these 2.0V Katmais at less then half the heat dissipation.