Passive cooling for my GeForce 5600

rouseindahouse · Post by **rouseindahouse** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 2:42 pm

I posted a few weeks back about coolers for my GeForce 5600 - I came to the conclusion that I'd probably get annoyed by the Zalman and the Arctic Cooling so I've had a look into passive cooling.

The two main coolers which have caught my eye were the

BeQuiet - PolarFreezer & the Aerocool VM-102 (both the same price)

I've got too main concerns - would these fit on my graphics card? Would they be able to be removed and put onto a 7800gt (and would they be able to cool this) if I ever chose to upgrade? The Aerocool has a rating of 70w, which should put the 7800gt just within the threshold and the Polarfreezer has a rating of 90w - I've seen tests though and the aerocool is cooler, should this translate into better cooling effectiveness on a higher wattage card?

So basically, which of those would you recommend?

Existing case layout (excuse the cabling) - http://www.ipulon.com/uploadedimg/PC/sideopen.jpg

Bottom of current cooler (excuse the dust) -
http://www.ipulon.com/uploadedimg/PC/gfxunderside.jpg

diver · Post by **diver** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 4:22 pm

Try a 150 ohm .5 watt resistor in series on the red wire going into the fan. Five for 99 cents at Radio Shack. Worked wonders around here.

rouseindahouse · Post by **rouseindahouse** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 1:25 am

It's not going to make it completely silent though and I'm almost certain that would cause my current card to overheat - it's running at about 75 load with it at 12v.

rouseindahouse · Post by **rouseindahouse** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 9:34 am

How true to form are those maximum wattage readings? I'm pretty sure it should be able to cope with my 30w or so, 5600 but would it actually cope if I was to put the 7800gt with 55w in there?

dfrost · Post by **dfrost** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 11:12 am

I'm very pleased with my VM-101 (admittedly on a 20-ish watt VGA), but would caution that any passive cooler needs some case airflow and minimal dust. Your intake fan looks like it might not be too effective with a passive GPU cooler by the time it has blown over the HDDs and through the cables, but the lower exhaust fan should help.

Also, the clearance between your CPU cooler/fan and VGA looks like it would be a tight fit for a VM-10x.

rouseindahouse · Post by **rouseindahouse** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 2:09 pm

Thanks for the reply. I think what I'll need to do (and what I will do) is rearrange the whole thing. Ideally, I'm going to get both of those hard drives up at the top or at least out of the airflow hopefully shifting a lot of those cables upwards. I'm also going to braid a lot of the extra cables so that should improve it at least a bit.

As for the GPU cooler, how high do they go. I've got about 40mm clearance although I'm guessing that you could've been referring to the fan bracket, which turns inwards, in which case it would seem I'm stumped.

*edit

Ok, got down on my hands and knees and measured that gap. There's about 17mm clearance between that bracket and the card but it gets out of the way a few mm across so as long as the vga cooler isn't exactly as wide as the card I don't think it'd be much of a problem - that is unless it gets higher than 40mm.

dfrost · Post by **dfrost** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 3:44 pm

rouseindahouse wrote:As for the GPU cooler, how high do they go.

Here's a detailed shot of my VM-101 (there are other pictures of it in that gallery) with a good view of a heatsink that I'd measured at 12mm tall. Scaling from that, it looks like the entire assembly stands just about 40mm above the VGA card surface. I'm not at that computer now, but when I'm home tonight I'll check that measurement directly.

Tephras · Post by **Tephras** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 5:33 pm

In another thread there was a post that stated that the hight above the back of the VGA is 42-44mm for the VM-101 and 34mm for the VM-102.

pony-tail · Post by **pony-tail** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:25 pm

I have used a Leadtek fx5600 vivo with a Zalman ZM-80d hp with no issues (even through a couple of Aussie summers) these cards do not produce a great deal of heat (compared to the likes of a Radeon 9800xt or a 6800 ultra or their ilk)
The one I was using on my linux box worked passively in an Antec sonata case with only a 120mm panaflo (l) on the rear and a 80mm Panaflo (l) in the psu
the mobo was an Asus P4C800-e and the Cpu is a 3.2 northy with a TT

"passive" cooler - the main thing was that I got it all to work together without issues even with 40c room temps .
So if silence is what you want the Zalman HP cooler is not a bad option.

rouseindahouse · Post by **rouseindahouse** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 10:28 am

What's the consensus on the vm-102 for it fitting?

On the Zalman note, I did consider the cooler but firstly I didn't even think it'd work with the card (obviously it does though, if you've got the same card as myself), secondly I've gathered that it doesn't cool as well as the vm-102 and might not be able to cool a 7800gt.

This might not be the case though, I'm just going from memory.

rouseindahouse · Post by **rouseindahouse** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 1:55 pm

Sorry, just to bump my previous post. Ideally, I need to order one tomorrow.

-=neo=- · Post by **-=neo=-** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 5:19 am

Heres a pic of my ghetto fx5600 mod... i used an AMD heatsink and attached it with string. it is very heavy, but i have got a wireless pci card underneath it just in case it falls off. the HS just about gets warm to the touch... worked great and no cost