Nvidia 5950 Ultra + Zalman VGA Cooler - Anyone tried?

redwylie · Post by **redwylie** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 11:46 am

Many thanks to all the contributors here. I just built my first quiet pc, but ended up having some problems and had to get a new video card, my old one died. so I bought a BFG Asylum GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and was thinking about mounting a Zalman Heatpipe VGA Cooler ZM80C-HP on it. I searched but no one seemed to have posted doing this yet.

I will run a fan on it - maybe a panaflow, cause it seems like the Zalman fan might not be the quiet way.

Thanks in advance

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 9:10 am

I have a ZM-80C on an FX5900 Ultra (which is pretty much identical to the 5950U, if anything it runs hotter AFAIK), if you look back a month or two you'll see I posted my experiences (which have been pretty positive).

I did have the Zalman fan, but changed it recently to a 92mm Panaflo M1A (the 24V jobbie running at 12V), and the result is noticeably quieter than the Zalman fan. Well worth the change (I regret the wasted money of the Zalman fan but, hey).

The downside of the latest generation of GFFXs is that they just dump lots of heat into your case, end of story, so you've got a case cooling problem almost by definition.

With a bit of messing about to improve airflow I now have an acceptably cool case and an acceptably quiet PC.

Alas I think that top-end graphics cards are only going to get worse in the power consumption stakes, but that's to worry about later.

redwylie · Post by **redwylie** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 10:06 am

Thanks Nutball, I had read your previous posts, I noticed that you did not mention what brand the card was. I am wondering how the mounting holes match up between the different manufacturers. The BFG has two fans and it seems like three mounting holes. Maybe I will ask Zalmann,

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 12:33 pm

Yeah, that could be an issue. My card is a Creative Labs card, which i think is based on the NVIDIA reference design. I think asking Zalman is a very good idea

redwylie · Post by **redwylie** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 4:48 am

In case anyone else is interested this is the reply I got back form Zalman USA

"The ZM80C-HP is compatible with the BFG 5950 Ultra. We also recommend that you use the ZM-OP1 (optional fan) Option to give it proper cooling, due to the 5950 Chipset running extremely hot."

So I think I am going to try it out.

Katowski · Post by **Katowski** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 9:42 am

@redwylie, I have the geforce 5900 and ZM80C-HP. In 2D mode (video watching, office applications etc.), the zalman cooler adequately cools the graphics card in passive mode. But in 3D mode, a fan is required, otherwise (after hours of playing) artificats appears and eventually the computer freezes. I doubt very much that the zalman heatsinks is to blame here, I think they cool the GPU down enough even in 3D mode, but that the ram heatsinks get trapped and baked until this happens.

Do note that I have a good airflow thru my case (but it is very silent;)