Recommendations for a Quiet of the shelf Radeon HD 3870?

moogaloo · Post by **moogaloo** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 6:20 am

I am not interested in replacing the cooler when I buy this card. Of the retaill HD 3870s which ones are quietist and are they quiet enough?

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:11 am

Well powercolour should soon release passive cooled HD 3870. I am sure sapphire will do same soon. But I've heard HD 3870 is quite quiet. But not enough for SPCR standards. My HD 3850 stock reference are amazingly quiet though. HD 3870 should be bit more audiable.

LaaG · Post by **LaaG** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 9:37 am

As far as I'm aware, all reference 3870s can have the fan speed changed using RivaTuner or ATITools.

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 5:45 am

Of course you could wait HIS HD 3870 IceQ version with better cooler and OC'ed with nice his treats ^^

moogaloo · Post by **moogaloo** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 7:24 am

Seems to be available already here?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =GX-089-HT

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Fri Jan 18, 2008 3:02 pm

Sweet, that was fast. I wish I could get HIS products again in Finland...

moogaloo · Post by **moogaloo** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 1:12 am

The HIS 3870 ICEQ seems to be by far the loadest thing in my case now. I don't know how load the stock version is, but this baby certainly could not be decribed as quiet

moogaloo · Post by **moogaloo** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:41 am

moogaloo wrote:The HIS 3870 ICEQ seems to be by far the loadest thing in my case now. I don't know how load the stock version is, but this baby certainly could not be decribed as quiet

Scrub that it turned out to be my motherboard making the ICEQ thrash it's fans!

See this thread for the details viewtopic.php?p=399222#399222

astro-k · Post by **astro-k** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 10:09 am

My ICEQ3 fan starting clicking on another card I bought in recent years. I've read around the net that others have the same problem unfortunately. Hopefully Sapphire will put a Zalman on the 3870 like their x1950pro ultimate (I think). ATITOOLS adjusted the fan very sweetly.

I've got the Powercolor PCS 3870. The Zerotherm cooler doesn't have the thermistor, unlike the 3rd party Zerotherm cooler you can get, so it's not that quiet. I removed it and put a 120mm quiet fan next to it with a fan controller. Bliss once more!

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 8:05 am

I bought a GeCube HD 3850 512MB O/C edition and the stock cooler is remarkably quiet at 40% speed but the GPU temp was well into the 90s under load at this speed.
It has a decent copper heatsink so I removed the plastic shrouding which includes the fan and stuck an 80mm Panaflo on it with Blutac and elastic bands. I used a Fan Mate 2 at its lowest setting and now the card is completely silent at load and peaks at 82C and idles at 42C. This was only last night so Iâ€™m sure I can increase the fan speed and still keep it silent and lower the temps even more.
I was going to install a Thermalright V2 but I see no point now so have saved about Â£20. The Panflo fan was 59p at Scan so all â€˜nâ€™ all it has been a very inexpensive way of modding a VGA for silence.

GeCube make a similar version with the HD 3870.