Sapphire 3850 SILENT Heatpipe 512MB

zerok66 · Post by **zerok66** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 7:33 am

Thanks to your help here and a few reviews online, it seems the 3850 runs at half the temp of the 3750 yet is not too much slower. Searching for stock of a 3850 has proven difficult, but has led me to find this:

Seems Saphire have released a silent version of this card... I wonder how good it would be, or if I would be better off with a standard version and the S1 cooler.

seraphyn · Post by **seraphyn** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 9:11 am

Looking from the picture, it's pretty similar to the S1, just a bit more narrow and it puts the heat at the toop of the card, instead of down.
Looks like Sapphire took a good look to the S1 and HR03 and decided to take the best of both worlds.

In any case, it looks pretty solid.

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 9:44 am

Now we just need them to do this with the 3870, we know it can be done based on other users actually doing it. The high end card with passive cooling!

Matija · Post by **Matija** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 10:03 am

Considering the Sapphiretech "heya, Antec suxx0rz, Enermax rullz0rz" mods and the whole thing that happened to a Hardforum user, are you sure you want to buy a Sapphire card?

Let's write this here so Google can pick it up:

DO NOT BUY SAPPHIRE CARDS.

Scoop · Post by **Scoop** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 10:37 am

ryboto wrote:Now we just need them to do this with the 3870, we know it can be done based on other users actually doing it. The high end card with passive cooling!

You mean 8800GT? Sparkle has one. And it works

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 10:51 am

Scoop wrote:
ryboto wrote:Now we just need them to do this with the 3870, we know it can be done based on other users actually doing it. The high end card with passive cooling!
You mean 8800GT? Sparkle has one. And it works

The GT isn't Nvidia's high end, I was referring to the ati line. Still, if we can cool the hotter GT passively, someone should do it with the HD3870.

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:33 pm

What's so bad about sapphire cards?

I had one, it was fine.

PLEASE BUY SAPPHIRE CARDS.

lol.. Plus, so what if some of the sapphire forum mods are a little stupid. They might not even get paid to police them.

Also, that looks like an excellent design. I look forward to seeing it tested somewhere.

gb115b · Post by **gb115b** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 3:32 pm

any ideas whether this will fit a fusion?

Mikey · Post by **Mikey** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 7:14 pm

I like the look of it

gb115b wrote:any ideas whether this will fit a fusion?

Looks very similar to the MSI 8600/2600 series as far as hight goes, which means 'maybe'.

I 'modified' my case lid to make that one fit though, so anything's possible.

I'd also be concerned that the fins drop down far enough so as to contact the northbridge, depending on your board. Hard to tell without better photos' though.

GavinAshford · Post by **GavinAshford** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 6:54 am

theres a simple review of it on fudzilla

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?optio ... 1&Itemid=1

the cooler apparently "was 7 degrees Celsius cooler than the temperature we measured on the reference card"

Delta_42 · Post by **Delta_42** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 7:46 am

gb115b wrote:any ideas whether this will fit a fusion?

Any gpu cooler with heat pipes that go over the top of the card is at best going to be an extremely tight fit in a Fusion. Most likely it won't fit without a bit of persuasion and tactical denting.

Locklear · Post by **Locklear** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 10:30 am

hard to judge by the pictures, but it kinda looks like the heatpipes are screwd in place ala the Zalman VNF100. If so the heatpipes can probably be pushed a bit closer to the edge of the card. Don't have any exact measurements to back up this theory though.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 10:40 am

er hm. it looks kinda neat. 7 degrees is huge so why not eh? no worry about sapphire saying F U if you want to rma it either for a replacement. shrugs?

GavinAshford · Post by **GavinAshford** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:09 am

and now PowerColor are now releasing a 3870 512MB GDDR4 heatpipe edition with reference clocks.

http://www.powercolor.com/Global/produc ... uctID=1702

sgtsmith · Post by **sgtsmith** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:15 am

I just purchased an HD 3850 and I was astonished by noise produced with the the reference cooler. At idle it's inaudible and at full load it's still fairly quiet. Of course, I would still like to add a passive cooler in the near future. Possibly the VNF100 if it will do the job adequately. I'll have to see how these passive cards perform in real world conditions before I make the jump. By that time I will have started noticing the reference cooler's noise. In true SPCR fashion.

SouthPaw · Post by **SouthPaw** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:32 am

The Sapphire silent HD 3850 will be my next video card IF it will fit in a Fusion case AND also not hit the chipset heatsink on my P5K-VM motherboard. It looks like it will be a really tight fit on both accounts...

SouthPaw

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:09 am

Many thanks for the information sgtsmith, i just ordered a Sapphire 3850/256MB with stock cooler, hope i'll have the same noise-feeling

GavinAshford · Post by **GavinAshford** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 2:52 am

some more photos of this card available from the Australian PC World review...

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php ... 51;pt;1#cb

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 8:25 am

It's a work of modern art. Seriously, it's beautiful.

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 8:52 am

Ok folks, my sapphire 3850 with 256MB is just arrived. It is very quiet, that's incredible, even under load it remain quiet.
This is my rig:
- Antec P150 with some foam from be quiet!
- 2 x WD Caviar RE2 400GB suspended
- C2D 6400 with Zalman CNPS8000
- 1 x 120mm Scythe at 7V
- 2 x 92mm Scythe at 7V
- PSU from Zalman 600W

Ok, it's not the Holy Grail of Silence, but my rig is inaudible from 2 meters, and i can sleep near it without headache

And the GFX card is inaudible over the rest of the system, now it's time to stress it, 3dmark i'm coming...

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 9:40 am

Would you mind sharing your VGA temp & room temp? I am curious about it. If it works ok, we wouldn't need to get one additional Arctic S1.

Kato · Post by **Kato** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 12:02 pm

About a week ago i ordered two of those cards, one for me and one for my friend. So yesterday they finally arrived. I tore the box apart , cardboard and paper was flying through the air, finally i was going to play all those great games that just came out. So i open up the unusually small box and inside i find the wrong f***ing card ,it had a FAN. Naturally i sent them back and called the shop where i bought them and explain my situation , it seams they did n`t know the card was actively cooled as well, so i call up another 4 shops and 3 of them did n`t know either, the fourth said that the supplier had not set a date for the availability of the passively cooled cards. I think it is safe to assume they will not be available before the end of the year. So before you order a card call up the shop and ask them to check if the card is passively cooled.

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 2:46 pm

loimlo wrote:Would you mind sharing your VGA temp & room temp? I am curious about it. If it works ok, we wouldn't need to get one additional Arctic S1.

According to Everest an CCC, i have 36Â°C (97Â°F) inside case, 37Â°C (99Â°F) in every core and 50Â°C on GPU in idle. I have a mess of cable inside my case, temps are a little too high i think

Inside my room i dunno, but it's a cold weater here in italy, and my radiators are on, maybe 20Â°C or more here.

GavinAshford · Post by **GavinAshford** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 4:38 pm

Kato wrote:About a week ago i ordered two of those cards, one for me and one for my friend. So yesterday they finally arrived. I tore the box apart , cardboard and paper was flying through the air, finally i was going to play all those great games that just came out. So i open up the unusually small box and inside i find the wrong f***ing card ,it had a FAN. Naturally i sent them back and called the shop where i bought them and explain my situation , it seams they did n`t know the card was actively cooled as well, so i call up another 4 shops and 3 of them did n`t know either, the fourth said that the supplier had not set a date for the availability of the passively cooled cards. I think it is safe to assume they will not be available before the end of the year. So before you order a card call up the shop and ask them to check if the card is passively cooled.

it appears that sapphire may have have stopped producing 256mb versions of the 3850 and are solely making 512mb ones: or so it seems on their product spread sheet - http://www.sapphiretech.com/en/productf ... -vga-1.xls

im sure when i looked there last week the 2nd card (the first 3850) said 256mb. so it looks like they may be shipping the 512mb cards with the active cooler but not the passive option yet.

Kato if you had got the 512mb version for the price of the 256 you might have had yourself a bargain!

the Uk site ebuyer has both versions on offer, with a Â£20 increase for the double memory.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/135726 - 256mb
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/138827 - 512mb

Kato · Post by **Kato** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 4:13 am

Kato if you had got the 512mb version for the price of the 256 you might have had yourself a bargain!

Ya that would have been a bargain, but i actually paid 195â‚¬ for one card and at that price i can get a 3870 so the card is not such a great deal, i think if you go for an actively cooled card this one has a pretty poor price/performance ratio.

loimlo · Post by **loimlo** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 5:12 am

_MarcoM_ wrote: According to Everest an CCC, i have 36Â°C (97Â°F) inside case, 37Â°C (99Â°F) in every core and 50Â°C on GPU in idle. I have a mess of cable inside my case, temps are a little too high i think

Inside my room i dunno, but it's a cold weater here in italy, and my radiators are on, maybe 20Â°C or more here.

Thanks, 50'c idle was pretty good for a stock passive cooler. At full load, it might reach 70~80'c range. Certainly ok for today's GPU.

_MarcoM_ · Post by **_MarcoM_** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 8:50 am

loimlo wrote: Thanks, 50'c idle was pretty good for a stock passive cooler. At full load, it might reach 70~80'c range. Certainly ok for today's GPU.

Now i want to start a 3dmark loop to know temps under load, stay tuned

likwidsh0k · Post by **likwidsh0k** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 2:23 pm

sgtsmith wrote:I just purchased an HD 3850 and I was astonished by noise produced with the the reference cooler. At idle it's inaudible and at full load it's still fairly quiet.

Thanks alot for the info

PretzelB · Post by **PretzelB** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 6:32 pm

I just looked at NewEgg and no sign of this card or any other passive for the 3850. I wonder why.

skj · Post by **skj** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 7:30 am

Newegg has it in stock now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102720

Roughly $70 more than their cheapest 3850 card.