Hello everybody this is my first posting at silent PC review, however I recently got a new system and I want to share my experience is trying to set up a quite PC at home. The products that I will be discussing have already been reviewed on the Internet however, my specific trials and tribulations will be documented here as well as the solutions that I have found to overcome limitations in the hardware.
The hardware and I will be discussing today and had trouble with requiring a solution include:
Sapphire x1950XT PCIE 256 MB video card
Antec Sonata III case and 120mm Tricool case fan
Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 passive VGA Cooler
Zalman FB123 92mm Fan w/ Adjustable Bracket
Arctic Cooling 120x120x25mm (AF12025 PWM)
I apologize for the length of this posting however I did not want to be labored and has all these problems have been on the market for some time.
My new system consists of the following components:
Antec Sonata III Case with 12cm Antec Tri-Cool case fan & Earthpower 500W Powersupply
Asus P5K Motherboard
Intel E6750 Core2Duo CPU w/ 2gig of OCZ DDR2-800 ram
Sapphire ATI 1950XT video card
Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Passive VGA Cooler
Arctic Cooling PWN controlled 12 cm case fan
In the end, I was forced to buy several fans and coolers in order to get the system is quiet wanted to.
*** Issue 1
Antec Sonata III Case with 12cm Antec Tri-Cool case fan & Earthpower 500W Powersupply
The Antec fan runs at a speed of 1200-2000 rpm and is selected using the switch in his placed inside the case. Unfortunately even at the lowest setting, the fan sitting in the rear of the case still has significant noise levels to it. The solution was to modify the Molex connector supplying part of the fan. By rewiring the 5-volt wire to power the fan, thereby reducing the voltage, the fan was able to run a significant more quietly.
*** Issue 2
Arctic Cooling 120x120x25mm (AF12025 PWM)
Another method I tried to quiet down the computer was to replace the exhaust fan with a different product. Dr. cooling solution is actually incredibly quiet and is rated to run between 400 to 1500 rpm. More importantly, where as to Antec fan has been manually selected between a low medium and high setting. This Arctic cooling fan is controlled by the PWM signal is doing to CPU fan control. The latest works as that there is a passed through cable that you plug the CPU fan into. Thus, the fan receives to control signal from the motherboard indicating how fast the CPU fan should be spinning. It in turn, spins up and down as the CPU fan is controlled and adjusted by the motherboard temperature settings.
This is really nice and that when you are running and I will low lobes the fan on that he goes into a low-power setting. However it is nice to know that when there is a significant power use, the fan will ramp up speeds and help exhaust heat better. You can actually buy 3 or 4 of these fans and daisy chain together however I think that this is a bit of overkill. Still having one or two of these fans in a system is probably not a bad idea.
I was very happy with the selection of this fan.
*** Issue 3 - VGA Card noise
Sapphire x1950XT PCIE 256 MB video card
Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 passive VGA Cooler
This card has been well reviewed over the Internet and even at silent PC review. It is a great card for the Price and I managed to pick one up in Canada for $175 Canadian plus tax. It is among the fastest direct X9 cards available and certainly provides a great pain to the back. However, it also runs extremely hot and ATI reference board cooling solution involves the usage of a very loud and fairly inefficient blower fan.
I tried to ignore this as long as possible and even tried unhooking the fan and determine unequivocally that this is a loudest component in the system. This is especially bad since the fan ramps up speeds when it keeps up during 3-D gaming and GPU loads.
In the end I actually spend more money in getting a passive cooling solution in the form of the Arctic cooling Accelero S1. The amazing thing with this passive cooler is that even among the Internet reviews, as long as your case has a modicum of air circulation, it actually works as well if not better than active solutions available for this card.
One significant concern is that on the Internet reviews, it mentioned the size of the cooler and that it may block up SATA ports on the motherboard. I was quite concerned about this as pictures do show that although the ATI 1950xt's already a very long card, the cooler now runs almost the same length as well.
I have happy to report that on the ASUS P35K motherboard, this cooler can be used without hampering or blocking any ports at all. Installation was relatively simple especially with Internet reviews describing how to install the cooler on the card.
Temperature readings before and after the instillation of cooler show that even in passive mode, this cooler is significantly better than the stalk ATI blower fan/heat sink combo. In addition, it makes absolutely no noise.
The problem that reverts back to the ATI video card. My card seen to have a loose capacitor or something because when cooling on passive mode, even though the GPU unit reported relatively low temperatures, there was a distinct whine that could be heard coming from the video card. I have to presume that this is coming from overheating of the voltage regulating units which are known to run fairly hot.
The solution for this is to rig up an additional fan that hangs from the cooler and runs a very low speeds. This provided exceptional cooling to the video card and seen to remove the whiny noise.
My main dissatisfaction with this is that for a $175 video card, I spent $30-$40 on cooling solution. Still, because of the exceptional performance of ATI 1950 chipset, and is not a particularly poor value especially in the light of quiet and 70 passive cooling.
The following are the temperatures I managed to achieve with the new cooler.
Video card Temperatures in Celsius
Stock cooler - idle 55
Stock cooler - load 70
Accelero S1 - idle 45
Accelero S1 - load 60
Accelero S1 - w/ fan idle 41
Acclero S1 - w/ fan load 55
*ADDENDUM
Mounting the ramsinks / VRM heatsinks
The ramsinks of the Accelero come provided with ?thermal tape already installed on them. The concept is to just peel and stick them onto the ram modules.
Multiple reviews have described the headache with this process due to the fact that the tape is very weak with the ramsinks falling off.
There are 3 solutions to this mentioned in other posts that I can share; and I didn't have any problems using this method.
1) clean the surface of the ram chips. I used 70% isopropyl alcohol on a cotton swab. Removes any residual oils left from the manufacturing process.
2) when you put the ramsink on, hold it there and press on it gently for about 15 seconds for each ramsink
3) after all the ramsinks are on, I put the card on a padded surface (foam eggcrate packaging) and put a few heavy paperbacks on it. Be careful of this step and your mileage may vary. I did this for about 15 min. allow the tape/adhesive to settle before moving the card again.
These 3 steps seem to prevent the often heard complaint on the forums/reviews about the ramsinks falling right off.
The VRM heatsink. there are two that come with the package one for the 1650 pro. The other is for the 1650XT. since I have the 1650XT card,installation of the heatsink involved
Removal of the previous heat sink installed by the manufacturer. Then simply screwing in the new provided heatsink. I actually had to remove the whole apparatus at the end because I had installed the VRM heatsink and incorrect direction. It is actually asymmetric with one side being slightly higher than the other allowing space for the presence of I. C. chips beside the VRM modules. Thus, if you have at 1950 XT card just be careful about the VRM heatsink orientation and take a look at from the side before you and spell she don't have my troubles of having to take card apart and reinstalling it.
*** Issue
Zalman FB123 92mm Fan w/ Adjustable Bracket
Because the ATI 1950 required a fan in order to prevent a whine from the voltage regulator's I also tried installing a Zalman fan. This is interesting product comes with a bracket that let's you suspend the additional fan of any size over the PCI slots. However the problem was that the S1 cooler was just so large, I was not able to use the bracket for that purpose. However it can still be used to suspend the fan for your CPU or even to replace your CPU fan. Overall I find his product to be relatively benign but not particularly useful for my purposes.
So there you have it, after many days of trying to use my system a very quiet level it required modification of the fan and placement of additional stains for acid marked systems. The main culprit of course was the Antec try cool K. fan as well as the very loud Stock cooler that comes along with the ATI 1950 XT video card. The video card component expected as it is known to be a very loud solution and using older generation GPU's is quite hot as well.
I hope that this review and my suggestions have helped you and that it may improve your abilities to mod your own case.
Good luck,
Kevin Leung
Review of various items 1950xt with Accelero S1 on Asus P5k
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Review of various items 1950xt with Accelero S1 on Asus P5k
Last edited by kleung21 on Wed Aug 01, 2007 12:09 am, edited 2 times in total.
Thanks for that Kevin, informative and useful for me as I have a P5K motherboard but an X1900XT which I am going to try and install the Accelero S1 and 'Turbo Module' on if I can ever find stock at a decent price in the UK that is.
Which P5K motherboard do you have? Mine is a P5K Deluxe/WIFI-AP and I have some concerns about the SATA connections and if the Accelero will block them, at present the IceQ3 doesnt.
Cheers,
Mike
Which P5K motherboard do you have? Mine is a P5K Deluxe/WIFI-AP and I have some concerns about the SATA connections and if the Accelero will block them, at present the IceQ3 doesnt.
Cheers,
Mike
I have 4 (2x 120mm and 2x 92mm) of those Arctic Cooling PWm enabled fans in my Antec SOLO case and I'm VERY happy with them.
I manage them using Speedfan and keep them around 900rpm (SILENT
).
I keep my E6600 @ 3ghz under full load (24/7 of BOINC) at around 55 degrees celcius in a room with temps above 20 degrees celcius.
R.
ps. I have one 120mm on my Scythe Ninja CPU cooler - the rest occupy the usual SOLO spots.
I manage them using Speedfan and keep them around 900rpm (SILENT
).I keep my E6600 @ 3ghz under full load (24/7 of BOINC) at around 55 degrees celcius in a room with temps above 20 degrees celcius.
R.
ps. I have one 120mm on my Scythe Ninja CPU cooler - the rest occupy the usual SOLO spots.
Addendums
Hi there Mike,
I have the Asus P5K board - no suffix's added. The Accelero S1 is a great heatsink.
I have included below some links to some articles on it:
http://www.ocia.net/articles/acceleros1/page1.shtml
http://www.xtremecomputing.co.uk/review ... 357&page=1
I'm pretty sure that in my research, I came across a post somewhere about someone installing an accelero cooler in their Asus P5K deluxe system without a problem.
I will amend my review to mention 1 thing about the accelero.
* Mounting the ramsinks / VRM heatsinks
The ramsinks of the Accelero come provided ?thermal tape already installed on them. The concept is to just peel and stick them onto the ram modules.
Multiple reviews have described the headache with this process due to the fact that the tape is very weak with the ramsinks falling off.
There are 3 solutions to this mentioned in other posts that I can share; and I didn't have any problems using this method.
1) clean the surface of the ram *chips. I used 70% isopropyl alcohol on a cotton swab. Removes any residual oils left from the manufacturing process.
2) when you put the ramsink on, hold it there and press on it gently for about 15 seconds for each ramsink
3) after all the ramsinks are on, I put the card on a padded surface (foam eggcrate packaging) and put a few heavy paperbacks on it. Be careful of this step and your mileage may vary. I did this for about 15 min. allow the tape/adhesive to settle before moving the card again.
These 3 steps seem to prevent the often heard complaint on the forums/reviews about the ramsinks falling right off.
The VRM heatsink. there are two that come with the package one for the 1650 pro. The other is for the 1650XT. since I have the 1650XT card,installation of the heatsink involved
Removal of the previous heat sink installed by the manufacturer. Then simply screwing in the new provided heatsink. I actually had to remove the whole apparatus at the end because I had installed the VRM heatsink and incorrect direction. It is actually asymmetric with one side being slightly higher than the other allowing space for the presence of I. C. chips beside the VRM modules. Thus, if you have at 1950 XT card just be careful about the VRM heatsink orientation and take a look at from the side before you and spell she don't have my troubles of having to take card apart and reinstalling it.
I have the Asus P5K board - no suffix's added. The Accelero S1 is a great heatsink.
I have included below some links to some articles on it:
http://www.ocia.net/articles/acceleros1/page1.shtml
http://www.xtremecomputing.co.uk/review ... 357&page=1
I'm pretty sure that in my research, I came across a post somewhere about someone installing an accelero cooler in their Asus P5K deluxe system without a problem.
I will amend my review to mention 1 thing about the accelero.
* Mounting the ramsinks / VRM heatsinks
The ramsinks of the Accelero come provided ?thermal tape already installed on them. The concept is to just peel and stick them onto the ram modules.
Multiple reviews have described the headache with this process due to the fact that the tape is very weak with the ramsinks falling off.
There are 3 solutions to this mentioned in other posts that I can share; and I didn't have any problems using this method.
1) clean the surface of the ram *chips. I used 70% isopropyl alcohol on a cotton swab. Removes any residual oils left from the manufacturing process.
2) when you put the ramsink on, hold it there and press on it gently for about 15 seconds for each ramsink
3) after all the ramsinks are on, I put the card on a padded surface (foam eggcrate packaging) and put a few heavy paperbacks on it. Be careful of this step and your mileage may vary. I did this for about 15 min. allow the tape/adhesive to settle before moving the card again.
These 3 steps seem to prevent the often heard complaint on the forums/reviews about the ramsinks falling right off.
The VRM heatsink. there are two that come with the package one for the 1650 pro. The other is for the 1650XT. since I have the 1650XT card,installation of the heatsink involved
Removal of the previous heat sink installed by the manufacturer. Then simply screwing in the new provided heatsink. I actually had to remove the whole apparatus at the end because I had installed the VRM heatsink and incorrect direction. It is actually asymmetric with one side being slightly higher than the other allowing space for the presence of I. C. chips beside the VRM modules. Thus, if you have at 1950 XT card just be careful about the VRM heatsink orientation and take a look at from the side before you and spell she don't have my troubles of having to take card apart and reinstalling it.
Last edited by kleung21 on Wed Aug 01, 2007 12:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
Thanks for correcting me on that -> yes, i mean to clean the ram chips (not the heatsinks) and I have corrected my posts thanks to you.
For the 1900Xt and 1950Xt, they already have a heatsink on the VRM chip. When you get the Accelero, it provides you with a replacement heatsink (it's thinner so it doesn't interfere with the Accelero) that you will be replacing it with.
Since the VRM heatsink is secured via screws, there isn't a problem with it falling off.
The only issue is to check the orientation of the heatsink take a look at it; so it fits properly (it looks symmetric at first glance, but it's not).
Sitting here right now, I think that the Accelero is the best $30 that I spent on my system recently. The 1950XT is a great video card and even after factoring out the heatsink, it is a good deal.
Back to your question, the VRM heatsink + a low speed fan will be more than enough to keep the Accelero cool.
For the 1900Xt and 1950Xt, they already have a heatsink on the VRM chip. When you get the Accelero, it provides you with a replacement heatsink (it's thinner so it doesn't interfere with the Accelero) that you will be replacing it with.
Since the VRM heatsink is secured via screws, there isn't a problem with it falling off.
The only issue is to check the orientation of the heatsink take a look at it; so it fits properly (it looks symmetric at first glance, but it's not).
Sitting here right now, I think that the Accelero is the best $30 that I spent on my system recently. The 1950XT is a great video card and even after factoring out the heatsink, it is a good deal.
Back to your question, the VRM heatsink + a low speed fan will be more than enough to keep the Accelero cool.