Mixed results with VF-900

quielb · Post by **quielb** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 1:36 pm

I just put a VF-900 on an a Sapphire X800 GTO and got mixed results.

As far as quiet, it is okay. I can still hear the fan spinning, not as quiet as I would have liked. It's the only noise source in my PC. It is quieter then the stock cooler that was on there which is an improvement. I guess to go quieter I have to look at the Condor/Raven wing coolers.

The cooling performance is outstanding. The stock cooler would keep the card just under red-line temps with a 35% overclock. The VF-900 kept the overclock temps at the same level as the stock cooler running at stock speeds. At a 35% overclock, the X800 w/ VF-900 never gets over 50C.

SebRad · Post by **SebRad** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 3:37 pm

Hi quielb, sounds to me like youâ€™d be a good candidate for a fan swap. Your saying itâ€™s too loud but plenty cool so put on a quieter slower fan and trade some of the cooling for less noise. Iâ€™m assuming youâ€™ve got some fan speed control going on, either through the card or the fanâ€™s hooked up to a fan controller (comes with a fanmate 2 doesnâ€™t it?) and itâ€™s turned down as far as it will go?
Nexus 80mm fans have been used but any 80mm fan you like that you know to be quiet enough for you is worth a go.
I did a quick search and come up with these two threads as being a starting point.
Thread 1.
Thread 2 with lots of links in it.
Hope this helps, Seb

quielb · Post by **quielb** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 4:27 pm

Thanks for the links to the other forum posts about fan swaps.

I wired the fan into the fan header on the card so that I could control the speed through ati tool.

I guess the next project is to do a fan swap.

Stereodude · Post by **Stereodude** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 7:12 pm

I'm interested in the VF900 fan swap also, but that mod looks a little bit complicated and convoluted. It also seems to make the cooler even taller...

Hmm...

kaange · Post by **kaange** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:43 pm

Can you wire a resistor or diode in series with the fan to slow it down more?

Greg

fabre · Post by **fabre** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:06 am

Once you are happy with your fan settings in Ati tool I suggest you implement them in the gpu bios like I described here

Works great, at 20% my VF-700 is dead silent and having the fan hardware controlled dynamically is in my opinion much better and safer, than a software solution and even better than feeding a low fixed voltage to the fan with the risk of the fan not starting or the card overheating under certain conditions.

Operandi · Post by **Operandi** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 10:18 am

I like fabre's suggestion a lot so I would try that first but I will say that I have my X800 (GTO) passively cooled with a Zalman's ZM80D-HP with good results.

Though my particular card sadly lacks temperature monitoring judging by how hot the heatsink feels I doubt it could be much more then 50-60C under load.

fresh · Post by **fresh** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 2:49 pm

I have vf-900 downvoltated to 3V (zalmans regulator only drops it to 5v where it's still loud) and it's near to silent, yet cooling performance still above average

quielb · Post by **quielb** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 8:51 pm

The VF-900 at 20% with ATI tool is a good noise level. And with the great thermal performance the fan probably won't ramp up 'til the hot days of summer.