GPU Sound outside of Game Play

Fonky · Post by **Fonky** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 1:19 pm

I do a lot of audio-engineering and I'm in the process of creating a very quiet system for that purpose but I'm also looking for my pc to be versatile: I want to play games. I'm thinking VERY strongly about the X800XT; it's received the highest reviews almost everywhere I've been as far as power-for-money ratio goes. My problem: I've also read the stock fan can get a bit noisy. The thing is that I don't want to have to add on a GPU fan because I'm new to this whole PC-building club and I'm afraid I'd break the card in the process. So, here's my question:

If I'm not running a game (or other 3D rendering programs) will my GPU fan be spinning?

In other words; when running Cubase, a non-graphics-intensive audio-recording program will I be faced with unwanted GPU fan noise?

I NEED SILENCE!!!! but only when recording. I don't mind a loud fan as I'm shooting the crap out of things in Half-Life 2 because I'll have loud speakers to drown that out.

slipknottin · Post by **slipknottin** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 4:21 pm

some gpu's slow down the fans, but i dont know of any that stop it completely. Even at 50% speed, they are still noisy little buggers.

I would try to find a passive card. I know there are passive 6600s and 6800s, there may be a passive x800xt too.

Straker · Post by **Straker** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 4:15 pm

even with the stock hsf, in 2d you can underclock the card fairly low without getting artifacts and then reduce fan speed to 20% or so. at that speed the shuffling noise the stock fan makes is completely gone, can't hear it over the rest of my pc, and it idles at 56C.

would imagine one of the third party cards that use a two-slot cooler would work even better.