Voodoo3 3000 Fanless?
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Voodoo3 3000 Fanless?
My dad has an old 3DFX Voodoo3 3000 that I would like to silence economically (i.e. not upgrade to a new card). Should I minimally use the Zalman ZM17-CU? Or can I use an even more basic heat sink for an old card like this? All he does is browse the web, email, and word processing for the most part.
Welcome to the SPCR Forums, abilstein!
I have three or four passively-cooled 3Dfx Voodoo 3 3000 video cards sitting around from past Dell Dimension 4100 machines, so I should be able to answer your question. These particular video cards utilize relatively large aluminum heatsinks to cool their graphics cores (similar to the heatsinks of Slot 1 Pentium II/III coolers); therefore, I would say that using any model of Zalman's heatpipe video card coolers would be somewhat "overkill." If you don't want to search for a generic heatsink on the internet and don't mind the Zalman ZM17-CU's price and installation, go ahead with a Zalman cooling solution. Hope this helps, and good luck!
I have three or four passively-cooled 3Dfx Voodoo 3 3000 video cards sitting around from past Dell Dimension 4100 machines, so I should be able to answer your question. These particular video cards utilize relatively large aluminum heatsinks to cool their graphics cores (similar to the heatsinks of Slot 1 Pentium II/III coolers); therefore, I would say that using any model of Zalman's heatpipe video card coolers would be somewhat "overkill." If you don't want to search for a generic heatsink on the internet and don't mind the Zalman ZM17-CU's price and installation, go ahead with a Zalman cooling solution. Hope this helps, and good luck!
Thanks for the welcome! I just discovered this site (and silencing in general) a few weeks ago. I've been reading the articles and forums, it's been very informitive.
Unless I'm confused, the ZM17-CU is not a heatpipe solution, it's just a large heat sink. I definitely wouldn't go with a heatpipe (too much cost/hassle) when I could just get him a stock passively cooled GF2 MX400 64MB card for around $35. Heck, now that I think about it, it's probably not even worth the $18 or so for a ZM17-CU when I can get the above mentioned card and increase his power for only another $20.
So I guess my question should really be can I go down to the local computer junk shop and pick up a generic large aluminum heat sink for a couple of bucks and just slap it on there? Sounds like you're saying that'd be okay...
Unless I'm confused, the ZM17-CU is not a heatpipe solution, it's just a large heat sink. I definitely wouldn't go with a heatpipe (too much cost/hassle) when I could just get him a stock passively cooled GF2 MX400 64MB card for around $35. Heck, now that I think about it, it's probably not even worth the $18 or so for a ZM17-CU when I can get the above mentioned card and increase his power for only another $20.
So I guess my question should really be can I go down to the local computer junk shop and pick up a generic large aluminum heat sink for a couple of bucks and just slap it on there? Sounds like you're saying that'd be okay...
I'd surely say so considering that the Voodoo3 3000 is much more powerful in comparison to the Voodoo Monster Fusion card. In your case, I'd actually suggest using a Zalman northbridge chipset cooler...should run fine considering that some forum members have successfully run similar chipset heatsinks on Radeon 9000 cards (albeit with a 80mm Panaflo @ 5V, but, hey, you're dealing with a product based around an old Voodoo chip).