Cheap VGA cooling, not passive, but very quiet

Qwertyiopisme · Post by **Qwertyiopisme** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 11:01 pm

Seeing as how my Arctic coling VGA silencer didn't fit on my 9600XT, I attached an unused zalman northbridge cooler (the ZM-NB47J) and made my own ghetto zalman fan arm with an 80mm fan @ 5V (generic no name fan, blows a bit less than your average fan but is very very quiet). Then I just aimed th fan exhaust at the nb heatsink and ran it. After about 20 minutes of 3dmark 03 it got a bit warmer than body temperature at the solid base. The pin-fins felt cold at the very tip. (Unfortunatelly it takes up 2 PCI slots, but I only use 1 pci slot so thats no problem for me). The heatsink is attached with my unused vga silencer attachment bar, but two screws with a plastic sheet can be used, becuase the nb flanges that attach to the base are thin and bend easily, so there is no risk of pcb bendage.

Wedge · Post by **Wedge** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 3:55 pm

So the holes of the ZM-NB47J match up with the silencer attachment bar? i.e., the ZM-NB47J holes match with that of the card?

flyingsherpa · Post by **flyingsherpa** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 4:03 pm

good idea, but MikeC beat you to the punch: http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=10549 see the first pic.

Qwertyiopisme · Post by **Qwertyiopisme** » Thu Mar 04, 2004 4:57 am

Yes, the zalman northbridge arms ar adjustable, giving a large range of size of stuff it can fit on. So it'l fit on mostly all cards.

klipkop · Post by **klipkop** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 11:45 am

Just by coincidence, I did the same thing today. Used an old 80mm plastic fan bracket to position an 80mm panaflo L1A fan over (next to?) the Zalman.

Side view. Left to right; back case wall, backet, fan:

|------9600XT----
|+----++----+
||Brkt||FAN |
|+----++----+
|

The 3700BQE has two holes in the back wall, drilled two holes in the plastic fan bracket to match those. Secured the bracket to the case with two 4-40 bolts and nuts (and rubber washers). Strapped the fan to the bracket with two cable ties.

Works great. Idle temp of the XT is the same, load temp is down from 50C to 40C. The L1A is silent among the other noisemakers. The ATI Overdrive software used to cut the GPU clock back to 500MHz under load, not anymore.

Take care to install the Zalman so that its fins are inline with the airflow. It fits both ways. In my case this is left to right when viewing the box from the front. Note that the Zalman mounting pins are very cheap and fragile. Had to revert to screws and plastic washers after both barbs broke on one of the pins.

The little 9600XT fan used to be the loudest in my box, now it is the stock PS fan. (All the other fans run 6V-12V off the one speed-controlled header on the p4p800 motherboard, with Speedfan doing temperature control).

Thinking of dropping an L1A in the PS as well. But as it is now, the PS exhaust is warm on the touch, so a little apprehensive of that mod.

Great forum!

DryFire · Post by **DryFire** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 1:10 pm

can i use the little plastic things that hold my XT's hs on to mount the Zalman northbridge heatsink and not have to epoxy it?

klipkop · Post by **klipkop** » Sun Mar 07, 2004 5:51 pm

can i use the little plastic things that hold my XT's hs on to mount the Zalman northbridge heatsink and not have to epoxy it?

Should work. Might need to drill the holes a little bigger on the zalman, my sapphire XT's pins did not seem to fit the little plates on the zalman.

Bolts and nuts work well, just need to make sure the nut does not short anything on the other side (with plastic washers - or maybe use plastic bolts?). Do not screw the bolts all the way down, use the little springs that came with the zalman to keep constant pressure on the heatsink.

Equilateral · Post by **Equilateral** » Sun Mar 14, 2004 3:21 am

Qwertyiopisme wrote:Seeing as how my Arctic coling VGA silencer didn't fit on my 9600XT, I attached an unused zalman northbridge cooler (the ZM-NB47J) and made my own ghetto zalman fan arm with an 80mm fan @ 5V (generic no name fan, blows a bit less than your average fan but is very very quiet). Then I just aimed th fan exhaust at the nb heatsink and ran it. After about 20 minutes of 3dmark 03 it got a bit warmer than body temperature at the solid base. The pin-fins felt cold at the very tip. (Unfortunatelly it takes up 2 PCI slots, but I only use 1 pci slot so thats no problem for me). The heatsink is attached with my unused vga silencer attachment bar, but two screws with a plastic sheet can be used, becuase the nb flanges that attach to the base are thin and bend easily, so there is no risk of pcb bendage.

Ahh, this was the question I was trying to get answered in this thread. Have you tried running it without the fan directed at it? I was wondering whether you could passively cool a 9600SE with a NB47J. This review states that "you must keep your fingers away since the heatsink becomes extremely hot", but then it's a somewhat tinier heatsink than the Zalman. OTOH it's also only a 9200SE, not a 9600SE.

Cheap VGA cooling, not passive, but very quiet

Cheap VGA cooling, not passive, but very quiet

Re: Cheap VGA cooling, not passive, but very quiet