quiet cooling for nVidia 6800 "vanilla" 256MB PCI-

[six4withafro]

Hello, and thanks for reading.

I own an eVGA 6800 256MB PCI-E video card and need a quieter cooling solution. I would really like to buy the Thermaltake ND1, or even the ND2, but it looks like the capacitor between the 6th and 7th memory chips on the front of my card will be in the way of both those coolers.

Can anyone with a 6800 "vanilla" who has installed aftermarket cooling tell me whether either of those coolers will fit, or which one you're using? I've emailed thermaltake, but who knows when I'll hear from them.

[kater]

Thermalright claims their HR-03 and HR-03 Rev. A fit all 6800 cards just fine. With estimated power consumption of your card at 50-60W under load the HR-03 should have no problems handling it.

[nafets]

..

[Tephras]

Can anyone with a 6800 "vanilla" who has installed aftermarket cooling tell me ... which one you're using?

Aerocool VM-102

[six4withafro]

Cool, thanks guys. That Zalman one looks like it would be fun to put together, if not all that easy, lol. I already have a Thermalright nb heatsink and it works great, so I'll probably shell out for the HR-03. My only concern with going passive is the fact that I live in southern California, so my summertime ambient temps make everything in my case hotter... to the point that my CPU and VGU have a different (and higher) temperature-increase gradient curve. Hence the HR-03.

[mjw21a]

I'd recommend talking a close look at the Vantec IceBERQ 6.

This is kind of a Arctic Cooling ATI/nVidia Silencer knockoff but much better designed. It will fit ever nVidia video card from the GeForce 3 onwards and all ATI cards from the Radeon 9800Pro onwards.

Good performance and very nice and quiet.

[Jumper]

I have an ND-1 on my 6800GT. It works great, with a little bit of modification. The mod I made was to plug the fan into my video cards fan header instead of a molex, so that I could use RivaTuner and driver level software fan control to set the speed. I found it to be pretty much inaudible over everything else in my case at 35%.

That said, the PCB layout on the plain 6800 may be different then the 6800GT/6800 Ultra. The ND1 is only specifically made for the Ultra, so YMMV.

I would recommend a sink that sens the heat out the back of the system over one that just moves it around inside the case.

I would also stay away from the IceBERQ 6 because it has a little tiny 45mm fan, so it will have to run relatively fast to cool a hot 6800. The reason I settled on the ND1 was because of the heatpipes and the fact that it has the largest fan out the three coolers of that type - IceBERQ 6, NV Silencer, and ND-1.