HD 4850 - Better Cooling/Better Performer!

XSAlliN · Post by **XSAlliN** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 1:41 pm

I personally love the silence, manage to build a silent system but my new HD 4850 ruined my plans so I had to find a fix for that. Silence is just one of the problems for this card straight out of the box. The temperatures go so high that in crashes my games after 20 minutes of play (Cod 4, Crysis, The Witcher). My logic blamed the temperatures but others with a similar product blamed the drivers abd that got me thinking.

Anyway, I wasn't gonna wait for a miracle, I'll make it happen. And with those word in my mind I searched for better alternative for cooling my new card which has a faulty cooling - and that's not just my opinion. :shakes:

Since I already have a case with good airflow, I put My fate in my old cooler (Accelero S1. Rev2) + a couple of RAMsinks like Zerotherm ZH100: and a AC Turbo Module

And now for the results:

Step 1 - I removed the faulty cooling and put those RAMsinks on PWM/RAM. I have to Arrange them in certain position so the heatsink would fit just right. I even covered the parts uncovered by the original cooler.

Step 2 - Installed the Heatsink, as shown in the next pictures (I used Noctua NT-H1 as thermal paste):

Now it's ready for passive cooling, but I adeed the Turbo Module for my internal peace and of course: better OC results if I needed a litle boost of performance. That takes as to Step 3 - AC Turbo Module:

Step 4 - not that the beast it's all dressed up it's time to put it where it belongs:

All fans or connected to the front fan controller (Zalman ZM-MFC1 Plus Black ). It's all silence related, but as you will see shortly, even a silent solution can be a good performer. Here's the complete installation and my idea of a good air flow for a cooler and better performing system (let's not forget the silence - as mentioned repetitively above):

The final results:

Idle as in the first picture:

The temperatures in Load after doing some OC:

Ok, that got me +1000 points in 3D Mark 2006 but that's far from my main interest.

It's cooler, performs better (closer to HD 4870) and no more crashes. Same games, same driver (8.7) and after 3 - 6 hours in different games my system didn't crash, yet before it use to crash after 20 minutes. Overall I'm more then happy with this results. Hope this helps other people to deal with the cooling problems of HD 4850.

mkk · Post by **mkk** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 3:11 pm

Looks great, especially with those extra heatsinks. Watch out though as GPU-Z says that the heatsink rotates once a minute.

Cryoburner · Post by **Cryoburner** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 7:15 pm

I like the green heatsinks on the red ATI card. It's like a shiny Christmas ornament.

Noctua fans are so ugly though. You'd think they could have picked a color that would actually look decent alongside modern hardware. : )

falcon26 · Post by **falcon26** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 7:58 pm

Yeah the S1 is an awesome cooler. I just put it on my 4870 and I'm running it passive

I get idle temps of 56 and load about 68

I know that isn't great but it better than stock and its fanless. The vrm's are at about 100 on load. Dead silent no buzzing noise or anything

very happy I only have ramsinks on the memory and the tiny vrm's

XSAlliN · Post by **XSAlliN** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 3:23 am

I'll say. I use the turbo engine for good airflow (a 120 fan would mess with that), plus near I have the Noctua on gard 24/7.

krille · Post by **krille** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 8:28 am

The Turbo Module uses the card's own fan controller? That's good in that case, but I still don't trust (like) small fans.

Attaching your average Nexus 120mm fan (even at ~7v or so) should provide much better performance, but is there any way to make the card's fan controller control a 120mm fan without any serious modding?

edit:

falcon26 wrote:Yeah the S1 is an awesome cooler. I just put it on my 4870 and I'm running it passive I get idle temps of 56 and load about 68 I know that isn't great but it better than stock and its fanless. The vrm's are at about 100 on load. Dead silent no buzzing noise or anything very happy I only have ramsinks on the memory and the tiny vrm's

Interesting, so no usually (very) high-pitched coil whine either? May I ask what manufacturer made your card?

XSAlliN · Post by **XSAlliN** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 1:26 pm

No, it uses the one in front:

About that nexus fan, I doubt it. As you can see I already have one and have to keep it at 700 RPM (from a total of 1100 RPM) to make it silent. At that speed it's not very efficient, but on the other hand that Nocutua Fan is at same speed and offers twice the efficiency. At 1100 RPM it's same as Noctua at 700 RPM but to noisy for my taste (not calibrated).

That Turbo model consist in Two Fans of 80 at maximum 1500 RPM ( I keep them at 800 RPM - 900 RPM) and they do just fine. The thing is (as you can see in the picture above) I didn't fallow the mounting instructions and put them close together.

If they were distant as described in the manual they'd work more individual and loose some efficient. The way i arranged them, they work together combined with that Noctua at right from were they get cold air constantly. If I'd used a 120 Fan, the space occupied would disturb the airflow which leads to lees efficiency.

I've tested both ways and this turned up to be a winner.

...and that's how it's shown in the manual:

You're theory would be plausible (as I've seen in many cases) if I'd remove my sound card and lower the Noctua Fan, but I need my sound card.

falcon26 · Post by **falcon26** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 6:07 pm

I got the visiontek brand....

falcon26 · Post by **falcon26** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 9:30 pm

I just ordered those green heatsinks for my 4870. I'm running it passive with zalman heatsinks on the memory but nothing on the vrm's. And their running about 90-100 idle so I think they need heatsinks. When I tried to use some more zalman ones they kept falling off....

XSAlliN · Post by **XSAlliN** » Sat Aug 16, 2008 1:51 am

This won't, they have a good thermal tape.

falcon26 · Post by **falcon26** » Sat Aug 16, 2008 7:25 am

That's good to know

I only need the 2 long ones out of that kit, or the very very small ones to go on the 4 vrm's on the 4870. They are really tiny.

Fred · Post by **Fred** » Sat Aug 16, 2008 10:54 am

mkk wrote:Looks great, especially with those extra heatsinks. Watch out though as GPU-Z says that the heatsink rotates once a minute.

Bwahaha, i think you just won the game. xD

tutu · Post by **tutu** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 4:43 am

Does the 4850 not come with pre-applied VRM/RAM heatsinks? I'm thinking of upgrading from a 3870 with S1 to a 4850 with S1. Could I just take the cooler off the 3870, slap on some MX-2 and be done with it?

Planning on running passively. I didn't bother to replace the 3870's VRM heatsinks.

XSAlliN · Post by **XSAlliN** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:41 am

No it doesn't, once you remove the original cooler the card is naked.

tutu · Post by **tutu** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 7:00 am

XSAlliN wrote:No it doesn't, once you remove the original cooler the card is naked.

Damn. Maybe adding a slipstream at 5v would be less hassle than adding heatsinks to the VRMs instead of a passive solution

tuz · Post by **tuz** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 7:50 am

tutu wrote:Damn. Maybe adding a slipstream at 5v would be less hassle than adding heatsinks to the VRMs instead of a passive solution

You don't have the VRM/RAM heatsinks spare that came with the S1? Or did the S1 not come with the additional heatsinks when you bought it for the 3870?

FartingBob · Post by **FartingBob** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 7:52 am

When i stuck my S1 on the 4850, the only heatsinks i had available were for the 8 RAM chips, which meant the few other chips on the board connected to the stock cooler currently have no heatsink at all, which is largely the reason i put on a 500rpm slipstream. the card could run passive, but id end up being paranoid about frying those other chips.

tutu · Post by **tutu** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:25 am

Well if the stock cooler doesn't have any heatsinks on the VRM then I would assume it would just be the same If I replace the stock cooler with a S1 and stick a low volt fan on it?

Except it would be much quieter and cooler. Please correct me if I am wrong!!

Scoop · Post by **Scoop** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 9:51 am

Awesome dude. I'm doing the same with Zalman ramsinks in the future if I get this card

I've never used third party VGA coolers so do you use the thermal paste on the core like you do with a CPU? Or on the base of the cooler? Those ramsinks don't have thermal paste under them right?

nafets · Post by **nafets** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:24 pm

Thermal paste on the GPU core, then install the VGA heatsink.

No thermal paste inbetween memory and heatsinks utilizing thermal tape...

tuz · Post by **tuz** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:58 pm

tutu wrote:Well if the stock cooler doesn't have any heatsinks on the VRM then I would assume it would just be the same If I replace the stock cooler with a S1 and stick a low volt fan on it?

Nah the stock cooler is just one big heatsink that is supposed to cool the GPU, RAM and VRM's at the same time. On the underside of the 4850 heatsink you can see how the pads are lined up with the RAM/VRM's, check out this link for some pictures. How much the stock cooler actually "cooled" the memory and VRM's is questionable I think, considering how inefficient it is.

But yeah I'd got for a low volt fan, while the card can run passive, a little bit of airflow really helps the S1.