Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 AGP

mwarsell · Post by **mwarsell** » Fri May 09, 2008 11:21 pm

I put together a very quiet computer system, I had an old fanless AGP card before, but it wasn't capable of running much HD stuff, so I bought the HD 3850 AGP from Sapphire.

I had no idea how loud that fan is. I managed to tune it down to 25% with Rivatuner (anyone knows how to get it spin even slower?), but that was that. It's still very loud, I can here it like 25 ft. away. And it's inside my case (Antec Sonata III Plus).

Anyone knows how to make this thing more quiet? Should I just return it and try to get a fanless GPU instead? The problem is, I also want some power in the graphics card, at least able to run 1080p movies.

Any owners of this GPU here who managed to make it quiet?

Thanks in advance.

autoboy · Post by **autoboy** » Sat May 10, 2008 7:46 am

A cheapo 3450 can also run HD movies just fine. Both cards have the same hardware for playing movies. Unless you want to play games, you might reconsider your 3850.

Blacktales · Post by **Blacktales** » Sat May 10, 2008 7:59 am

Or you can just slap an Accelero S1 on the screamer and enjoy your sanity again.

Have Fun !

mwarsell · Post by **mwarsell** » Sun May 11, 2008 8:03 pm

Yes, I managed to completely quiet down my HD 3850 AGP fan with Rivatuner v. 2.09.

Now I progressively made the fan start spinning at 5% at 45C and speed it up from there if it gets too much heat.

Ultimate silence again! And with the power horse of HD 3850!

Immortals · Post by **Immortals** » Sun May 11, 2008 9:50 pm

Blacktales wrote:Or you can just slap an Accelero S1 on the screamer and enjoy your sanity again.

Have Fun !

Sadly he can't do that. The layout of the AGP version is different and it also has the PCIe-> AGP bridge that needs cooling. The default 3850 PCIe reference cooler is the quietest I've ever heard (and it's also a single slot cooler too). The sad thing is it's not very effective which is why the accelero went on

Blacktales · Post by **Blacktales** » Mon May 12, 2008 9:50 am

Do you have any source to back this ? I would be very interested because i planned on doing just that to my own AGP HD3850.

I seem to remember seeing someone with a Sapphire 3850 coupled with an accelero S1 on another forum and it seemed to be performing quite good. Can't find it now though.

And if you look on this thread,
http://www.octeamdenmark.com/forums/sho ... php?t=1421

You see the space between the screws on the PCB is the same, thereby allowing installation on the Accelero S1 or the rev.2. And i don't see any capacitor that would get in the way or any other element that would rise above the heatpipes.

You can also see the cooler only makes contact to the GPU itself and the ram chips so the bridge (which i suppose to be the chip on the back of the PCB next to the AGP connector itself) does not receive any direct cooling. I don't even know why the chip is covered with a thermal pad but i suppose putting a third party small heatsink in its place would actually improve its cooling.

So, if we admit we have ramsinks on the ram chips, we keep the VRM heatsink, put a heatsink on the back of the PCB on the bridge and have at least a bit of airflow over the card, i don't see why the Accelero would not fit or perform great.

Anything i'm missing ?

Thanks IA

Immortals · Post by **Immortals** » Mon May 12, 2008 2:18 pm

Blacktales wrote:Do you have any source to back this ? I would be very interested because i planned on doing just that to my own AGP HD3850.

I stand corrected. If someone else has done it then it should be fine. I know other models that have compatibility for the pcie version but not the AGP version and I just assumed it was the same for this model.I would ask arctic cooling for the definitive answer. I have the 3850 and you'll really appreciate the temp drop with the accelero