Anyone ideas for making the AGP 7800 quiet?

jhh · Post by **jhh** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:13 am

I have a pretty nice system. Not cutting edge, but pretty nice. Athlon 3300 etc.

The only thing that needs any upgrades is the fanless GeForce 4200 video card. I don't do games that often, but it is getting a bit jumpy even for me. The mobo doens't have PCI-E and I don't have the money or energy to upgrade the whole mobo+CPU+ram so I need an AGP card. The 7800GS seems a pretty good choice in a limited field.

Problem is, it seems to have the usual big noisy cooler. Any ideas on running it with an after-market heatsink? Better yet, is anyone making fanless ones?

quizzicus · Post by **quizzicus** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:39 am

In terms of cards themselves, you may want to reconsider. If this is a platform you're sticking with for a few years, the 7800GS is the best you can get. However, if it's just something to hold you over for a few months, the 6800(vanilla) and the X1600 cost about half as much and are still magnitudes better than your GeForce4. Not to menton that each one runs on about 30 watts less.

jhh · Post by **jhh** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 8:06 am

quizzicus wrote:In terms of cards themselves, you may want to reconsider. If this is a platform you're sticking with for a few years, the 7800GS is the best you can get. However, if it's just something to hold you over for a few months, the 6800(vanilla) and the X1600 cost about half as much and are still magnitudes better than your GeForce4. Not to menton that each one runs on about 30 watts less.

Sounds like good advice. However, the market seems all messed up with the silent 6800s Gigabyte cards.

For example, I can't find the fanless 6800 for less than £170, while the 7800GS (with fan) is going for about £190.

Links:

Fanless 6800 on Froogle UK
7800 on ebuyer for about £190

If it is doable, I'd rather pay 11% more for a much faster card, and replace the heatsink. My monitor is a 1600x1200 TFT so I'm tied to high resolutions, plus I do graphics work on this machine and good antialiasing would be nice, if not quite essential since most of my tools aren't hardware accelerated yet.

I should have given some more information on my system in the original post. I run Linux, and don't fancy fighting with ATI's not very good drivers (installing video drives is really easy in Ubuntu, but are reportedly some stability problems with the ATI ones) whereas I've always found the Nvidia ones to be pretty reliable.

Also, there is a 120mm fan running slowly right over my video card, bringing cooler air in from outside the case. It runs at about 8v, so is almost inaudiable, but because of it's size should improve the performance of any passive heatsink considerably. The only question is, will one fit on the card?

Tephras · Post by **Tephras** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 8:57 am

Accelero X1 and NV Silencer 5 from Arctic Cooling fits the GF6800 as well as the GF7800, same thing with the VF700 and the VF900 from Zalman. So, supposedly, coolers compatible with the GF6800 series are also compatible with the GF7800 series.

jhh · Post by **jhh** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:23 am

Tephras wrote:Accelero X1 and NV Silencer 5 from Arctic Cooling fits the GF6800 as well as the GF7800, same thing with the VF700 and the VF900 from Zalman. So, supposedly, coolers compatible with the GF6800 series are also compatible with the GF7800 series.

Thanks for the reply. I'd assumed heatsinks woudln't be readily available (quietpc.com list the AGP 7800s as "No solution" here)

I'm quite a fan of Zalman products having had a few in the past. I'll look up the VF700/900.

jhh · Post by **jhh** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:26 am

I just checked the Zalman site. They list the VF700s as: 7800 GT and 7800 GTX (no mention of the GS) and the VF900 as "7800 series (except GS)"

Ah well. I'm pretty pissed at the whole having to upgrade to PCI-E thing. I suppose I'll just put it off until my CPU is too old, and then upgrade a bunch of stuff at once.

teejay · Post by **teejay** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 12:55 pm

See this thread for some discussion on this card. There are a few problems with cooling this card with an after-market cooler:

since the GPU core is native PCI-E, the card employs a HIS chip to bridge between the core and the AGP slot. This chip needs cooling just like the GPU. This requirement alone rules out a lot of coolers;
the entire card lay-out differs greatly from the regular 7800 PCI-E models: all power-related circuitry (caps and such) are on the bracket-side of the card;
the hole spacing around the GPU differs from all other cards on the market.

Unfortunately I bought this card in a bit of a rush, right before a LAN party, so I hadn't researched my options properly. It certainly delivers in terms of performance but the noise penalty is high: my system went from quiet as in "somewhat audible late at night" back to audibly doing its job. There is no way I'm swapping it back out again though... running Need For Speed Most Wanted at 1600x1200 with FSAA... is just too sweet

What I want to try as soon as I have some time available, is running it with a bigger fan pointed at it while having the cover of the cooling removed and the stock fan disconnected.

dragmor · Post by **dragmor** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:24 pm

teejay,

Have you tried using ATI tool to lower the fan speed and/or undervolting the card in the bios?

Tephras · Post by **Tephras** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:24 pm

jhh wrote:I just checked the Zalman site. They list the VF700s as: 7800 GT and 7800 GTX (no mention of the GS) and the VF900 as "7800 series (except GS)"

Hmm, it seems as there's always a hidden exception in the small print due to all the different VGA models that's available nowadays.
The NV Silencer 5 rev.3 fits the GF7800 "basically" according to Arctic Cooling, as long as you, the buyer, is prepared to do some modding of the fan connector. I suppose they realised they had a bit to many NV/ATI Silencers in their product lineup to add yet another version. At least they don't charge you for the modding instructions. (do I sound like an embittered old man?)

teejay · Post by **teejay** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:32 pm

dragmor wrote:teejay,

Have you tried using ATI tool to lower the fan speed and/or undervolting the card in the bios?

Well, ATi-tool doesn't show fan speed control for this card (yet)... at least on my card. I'm using the latest beta (0.25 beta 14). I have not added the RivaTuner.cfg line ultraboy suggested in the thread I linked before, so maybe RivaTuner allows fan speed control? I have experimented with underclocking in 2D mode, but that did very little for the average temperature. Undervolting in the bios sounds a bit adventurous to me... and will probably lower the cards OC potential (right?).

Tephras wrote:The NV Silencer 5 rev.3 fits the GF7800 "basically" according to Arctic Cooling

I'm pretty sure this relates to the PCI-express cards. All three points I made before suggest that this won't fit (no first-hand experience though).

jhh · Post by **jhh** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:20 am

teejay wrote:See
[*]the hole spacing around the GPU differs from all other cards on the market.[/list]Unfortunately I bought this card in a bit of a rush, right before a LAN party, so I hadn't researched my options properly. It certainly delivers in terms of performance but the noise penalty is high: my system went from quiet as in "somewhat audible late at night" back to audibly doing its job..[snip]

What I want to try as soon as I have some time available, is running it with a bigger fan pointed at it while having the cover of the cooling removed and the stock fan disconnected.

Looks like you're in the boat I almost rushed into too!

Please post if removing the cover of the cooler and using a large fan works, since that'd be a good solution for me. I already have a largish 120mm suckhole over the card so if it can be cooled this way that'd be perfect. The fan is also on one of those variable controller thingies so I could turn it down when not doing graphics stuff.

ultraboy · Post by **ultraboy** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 8:57 am

I've been playing with my XFX 7800 GS (440/1300 version) for about 10 days now, here're my learning:

At stock setting, the card will automatically down-clock itself to 275/1300 (2D setting), fan will spin at 55%. When 3D program is detected the card will immediately goes to 440/1300 and 79% fan speed.
ATI Tools and ATI Tray Tools have not yet offered any control on 7800 GS. Current version of Riva Tuner 2.0 RC15.8 also do not officially support 7800 GS, but you can enable it using the change in config file (made possible by rui0317 in Guru3D forum) which I've copied/pasted in the other thread that teejay linked to earlier. With Riva Tuner enabled, I now have access to clock setting, fan setting, and other functions available in RT - so far.
Lowering the 2D setting doesn't seem to work on a permanent basis, though with a bit of cheating I manage to have 2D at 250/1175 (lowest possible within driver suggested limit). Hopefully with updated version of RT this can be done better.
With room temp at 28C, my VGA idle at 47C and peak at about 62C (3 hrs. of rthdribl). Fan setting is 55-75% and most of the time stays at 65%.
XFX stock fan is not bad, at least I can live with it (for now). Having done some rough measuring I think ZM80D will fit, but you may need to check the length of your case to ensure that the heatpipes will not be jammed by drive bays. The main problem is HSI chip, need to mod something - may be using the early day sink for VGA ram, you know the long one that can cover 2-3 VGA ram. I don't think NV Silencers 5 will fit since board layout is quite different.
The card has its own fan control circuit using PWM fan (4 wires fan), so a quiet 80mm PWM fan would be perfect - just hang the fan below and plug it to the card. No need to use T-ban set up as I suggested in the other thread. Anyone know such a fan?

Tephras · Post by **Tephras** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 1:28 am

teejay wrote:
Tephras wrote:The NV Silencer 5 rev.3 fits the GF7800 "basically" according to Arctic Cooling
I'm pretty sure this relates to the PCI-express cards. All three points I made before suggest that this won't fit (no first-hand experience though).

You are perfectly right*. I overlooked the fact that the subject of this thread is the AGP version.

*Arctic Cooling wrote:AGP: Geforce 6800 Series, FX 4000
PCIe: Geforce 6800 Series, Geforce 7800 Series...

teejay · Post by **teejay** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 9:21 am

Well, got RivaTuner up and running. Lowering the fan speed has made quite a difference: going down from 50% to 40% takes a lot of the "whoosh" out of the noise, so that is definately an improvement. My temps were already a bit higher than the values Ultraboy reported though and I do see the GPU temp rising steadily, so testing is in order. IT Used to idle at ~52C and I've had maximum temps of ~73C as reported by ATi-tool after an hour or so of gaming, with the card OCd to Ultraboys levels.

These temps should be taken with a grain of salt though, since I am still trying out various ways of ducting the airflow inside the case. I currently have the interior of my case split in 2 by a barrier parallel to the video card, with the exhaust air of the video card flowing into the lower section where my CPU is (inverted case, V1000). This has done a world of good to my Northbridge temps, but it may adversely affect GPU temps.

The good thing is that I started to hear my Raptor seek again...

mkygod · Post by **mkygod** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 1:00 am

I don't know if this will help you but this is my 'poorboy' approach to quietly cool down my geforce 6800 nu:

1) remove the shroud covering off the heatsink and unplug the VGA fan.

2) buy a fan card bracket, this is basically just a bracket that fits under your video card, and is a plain silicone board for mounting an 80mm fan.

3)The card usually comes with its own fan (got mine for ~9 bux from newegg), but replace it with your favorite quiet 80mm fan. On low speed (around 1500rpm), it cools the card better than the stock fan. I used a YateLoon 80mm fan on mine.

The benefit is a very cheap and easy installation. No need to remove the stock heatsink (removing stock hs will void XFX warranty i believe). It brought my temps a few degrees, nothing dramatic, but results are MUCH quieter. And the beauty is you get to choose from a variety of your favorite fans to use.

Drawback is you lose the vanity plate shroud from your video card, and lose a bracket slot. It is a little unsightly if you have a computer with a window, but I don't think the average SPCR person has windows on their computers anyways.

mentawl · Post by **mentawl** » Sun Apr 16, 2006 1:08 am

Just thought I'd share the mod I made to my 7800GS to quieten it down

.

Basically removed the shroud and the original fan from the cooler, and remounted the cooler using some fresh thermal paste (the RAM interface was those wee cotten-soaked-in-paste type things, not the most effective). I then attached a quiet 80mm Papst fan to the stock cooler, using the mounting lugs for the shroud as attachment points - there are three of these lugs in near-perfect positions for an 80mm fan.

I used the core removed from some wire to attach the fan, but a twisty-tie or something would probably work equally well - even some thread would do the job.

The very quiet Papst (I can't even hear it at 12v, let alone lower) keeps the card at 50c idle and 57 under load (that's overclocked to 475mhz/1500mhz core/RAM), which I'm very happy with, and is infinitely quieter than the stock cooler

. That's even in my Sonata II with only a single exhaust fan (38mm depth SilentX fan running at min speed on a fanmate). Pics as follows :

Up-close of the card:
http://www.benslie.clara.co.uk/7800fan-1.jpg

Running in my PC:
http://www.benslie.clara.co.uk/7800fan-2.jpg

Hope this is of some use to folks

.

P.S. I'm very impressed with the Sonata II. It's keeping 5 HDs (including a 10k and 15k SCSI drive), a 3.4ghz P4 and an overclocked 7800GS at perfectly happy temperatures, with only a single fan running at the lowest speed on a Zalman fanmate.

ultraboy · Post by **ultraboy** » Sun Apr 16, 2006 5:51 am

mentawl..nice mod. Your story on original thermal paste get me scared.

Nice cable management too..with all those Hdds....

Trunks · Post by **Trunks** » Sun Apr 16, 2006 12:59 pm

quizzicus wrote:In terms of cards themselves, you may want to reconsider. If this is a platform you're sticking with for a few years, the 7800GS is the best you can get. However, if it's just something to hold you over for a few months, the 6800(vanilla) and the X1600 cost about half as much and are still magnitudes better than your GeForce4. Not to menton that each one runs on about 30 watts less.

agreed

Xoman · Post by **Xoman** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 11:59 am

Just an update...
I had planned to buy 7800 GS agp but no cooling was available and was looking at 7600 GT(possible for AGP) or X850XT as alternative until I saw this.

Artic Cooling is coming out with Accelero S series in June. Accelero S2 covers 7800 GS agp and the best part is that it is passive cooling.
This will be my last video upgrade for agp before converting to PCI and I hope it last a bit longer.

ultraboy · Post by **ultraboy** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 11:15 pm

Xoman, Welcome to SPCR!!!, and thank you for signing up to post the good news.

Looking at the drawing on Arctic Cooling's site, the Accelero S looks a bit strange to me without HS on the underside.

May be an early concept design. But 4 heatpipes is cool.

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 11:48 pm

jhh wrote:I just checked the Zalman site. They list the VF700s as: 7800 GT and 7800 GTX (no mention of the GS) and the VF900 as "7800 series (except GS)"

Ah well. I'm pretty pissed at the whole having to upgrade to PCI-E thing. I suppose I'll just put it off until my CPU is too old, and then upgrade a bunch of stuff at once.

EDIT: Just noticed that you already got an Athlon 3300, so never mind the below...

Can a 7600GS do the job? If so, it cost 97£ (http://digitalkind.co.uk/Inu_products/I ... f=88814332). That'll leave you with 100+$ for new mobo and CPU, compared to a 7800GS+cooler. I'm not familiar with UK prices, but I believe you can get a Athlon 64 3200+ for that money.... The challenge is that cooler, mobo and ram also costs... And it also depends on your CPU needs...

atha · Post by **atha** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 2:01 am

Gainward 7800 GS silent AGP versions seem to have a cooler looking much like the AC silencer.

http://www.gainward.net/products/

If I've understood various forums posts correctly, "7739-BLISS 7800GS Silent 512MB AGP" is actually AGP version of 7800 GT and "7876-BLISS 7800GS Silent 512MB GS+" is based on 7900 GT core. They seem to be priced accordingly.

I'm not sure about the availability of those cards in all markets. The link refers to Gainward europe.

teejay · Post by **teejay** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 11:36 am

You can also lower the fan speed of the stock cooler on the 7800GS with RivaTuner: this will at least lower the 2D noise level. I have mine running at 32% speed and it stays below 55C. It's not silent by any means but it's not noticably louder than the Zalman VF700 on my previous card. 3D is still noisy though...

tangesazen · Post by **tangesazen** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 12:59 pm

I just bought a BFG 7800 GS AGP.

It fit easily in my Antec Aria case. The molex power connector is at the end of the card, so I was a bit worried until I plugged it in. But there's plenty of room.

The latest RivaTuner 2 RC 16 supports the 7800 GS.

The video card fan is obnoxiously loud in 2D mode, but as others have said, RivaTuner will let you reduce the fan speed to a much quieter (but still noisy by SPCR standards) level. With the crampt confines of the Aria case, I was only able to reduce the fan speed to 40% and still keep the card temps the same. It stabilizes at 57C in 2D mode, and gets to 73C after a few hours of Oblivion.

Speaking of Oblivion, it runs smoothly at 1024x768 ultra high quality.

The BFG card comes clocked at 400 MHz core, 1200 MHz mem. Using the Nvidia control panel's automatic overclock feature, I'm running it at 493 MHz core, 1430 MHz mem.

I don't have a top-end system: Athlon 64 3200, 1 GB RAM, 7200 RPM HD. The video card is all of the reason for being able to see all the eye-candy.

Anyone ideas for making the AGP 7800 quiet?

Anyone ideas for making the AGP 7800 quiet?

Humph

Re: Humph

Re: Humph