VGA Silencer Rev. 2 DOES NOT FIT AIW 9800 Pro 128

[tksuther]

I received my VGA Silencer, Revision 2 on Friday and installed it last night as part of a makeover to quiet my machine. I also installed a Zalman 7000A-CuAl CPU cooler and two 120mm Silenx fans. Anyway, the mounting bracket and grounding plate DO NOT FIT the AIW 9800 Pro 128, despite the fact many people said it does, including Quiet PC USA where I bought it. Since I had the machine taken apart, I went ahead and made it work. I used the existing bracket and cut the grounding plate to fit. Then I drilled a hole in the back of my Sonata case and installed the hi-low fan switch. ALSO - beware - after I carefully applied the thermal grease (included) and placed the cooler on the board I began to tighten the screws. The screw that passes through the heatsing wouldn't tighten. The threads were were not cleanly tapped. I had to take the cooler off the board and pass the screw through the hole several times to clean the threads. So before you place the cooler assembly on the board, make sure the screw holes are properly tapped!. Also, the cooler comes very close (actually touches) my Audigy 2 ZS sound card underneath it (2 slots below the VGA) but should be okay since the VGA cooler's housing is plastic. The result: Definitely MUCH quieter than the stock fan - basically silent on low and quiet but audible - still kind of loud - on high. I don't have a temp probe for the VGA so I really don't know the cooling effect - I was mainly trying to reduce noise. Yes, it's worth the investment (time and money). For what it's worth, by adding the Zalman CPU cooler and VGA Cooler, changing the existing (already quiet) case exhaust fan to a 14 DB Silenx and adding a case intake fan, also a Silenx 14 DB, my idle temps on the CPU and mother board both dropped about 4 degrees C (CPU 38, MB 25 at idle now). Under load, the CPU is about 4-5 degrees cooler and the mother board temp barely changed - up maybe 1 degree (CPU 55, MB 26 under HEAVY load now)! I have the CPU fan turned-up halfway and the VGA Cooler fan on low. I have a 3,0 GHz Pentium overclocked to 3.62 GHz, so theses are pretty good temps. I also foamed my case (Antec Sonata) and I now have the closet thing (sound-wise) to a passive/water-cooled machine! Plus, it was kind of fun putting it all together.