I have a 9800 Pro in my Shuttle XPC, and I want a quieter cooler than the stock solution.
Being such a small box, I can't use the VGA silencer or Zalman passive cooler to reduce the noise of the fan as there is no room on either side of the card for these soutions.
So, I figured I'd ask the experts... in your experience, what's the very quietest Radeon cooler that doesn't take up an additional slot?
What's the quietest radeon cooler that doesn't take 2 slots?
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Hi Serengeti, a few ideas for you.
I have a Radeon 9600pro and the fan was getting on my nerves. (I've got an Artic Cooling VGA Silencer on order but that’s another story) As a short-term stopgap I pulled the fan power plug off the card (with everything turned off - obviously) and used thin wire to connect the fan to 5V from the PSU. I used the cores out of telephone cable as they are solid but thin enough to bend easily. The bare ends of the wire poke into the plug so I didn't need to cut/join anything. This makes it MUCH quieter and it still seams to cool OK even when gaming. I know the 9800 produces a lot more heat than the 9600 and you're using a SFF PC but the 9800 has a much bigger heatsink/fan than the 9600 and it wouldn't cost anything to try. I would try 7V first and keep a check on the cards temp.
You could make a custom heatsink, e.g. use a low profile CPU heatsink with a quiet 80mm fan blowing at it from where ever it will fit. You could even start with a large CPU heatsink and cut it down to exactly fit the available space.
I’ve seen a picture of a Shuttle box with a Zalman heat pipe cooler on the graphics card. A large hole had been cut in the side of the chassis and the heatsink stuck out through it!
Biostar make a SFF PC with the PCI slot out side the AGP slot so it will take double width cards.
Seb
I have a Radeon 9600pro and the fan was getting on my nerves. (I've got an Artic Cooling VGA Silencer on order but that’s another story) As a short-term stopgap I pulled the fan power plug off the card (with everything turned off - obviously) and used thin wire to connect the fan to 5V from the PSU. I used the cores out of telephone cable as they are solid but thin enough to bend easily. The bare ends of the wire poke into the plug so I didn't need to cut/join anything. This makes it MUCH quieter and it still seams to cool OK even when gaming. I know the 9800 produces a lot more heat than the 9600 and you're using a SFF PC but the 9800 has a much bigger heatsink/fan than the 9600 and it wouldn't cost anything to try. I would try 7V first and keep a check on the cards temp.
You could make a custom heatsink, e.g. use a low profile CPU heatsink with a quiet 80mm fan blowing at it from where ever it will fit. You could even start with a large CPU heatsink and cut it down to exactly fit the available space.
I’ve seen a picture of a Shuttle box with a Zalman heat pipe cooler on the graphics card. A large hole had been cut in the side of the chassis and the heatsink stuck out through it!
Biostar make a SFF PC with the PCI slot out side the AGP slot so it will take double width cards.
Seb
-
- Posts: 46
- Joined: Tue Sep 02, 2003 4:04 pm