passive/silent GTX260/280?

RyanW2050 · Post by **RyanW2050** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 4:47 pm

I'm looking to upgrade to a 30in monitor in the future and I believe i'm gonna need a new card to push those pixels, even in WoW.

Currently i'm using an EVGA superclocked 8800GT with a Accelero S1Rev2. It's really all i could ask for, great temps and no noise.

Can anyone vouch for the Accelero XTREME GTX280's silent-ness? Are there any other silent cooling solutions out there for the GTX260/280?

Thanks

shleepy · Post by **shleepy** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 5:28 pm

I'd try out the 8800gt on the 30 inch before upgrading, if you only play things like WoW. And honestly, from one 30" WoW player to another - don't even run it in full screen. I play it on 1600x1200 in windowed mode and multi-task in the remaining space. It actually feels strange and really unnecessary to play a game like that on the whole 2560x1600.

syrian_gamer · Post by **syrian_gamer** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 9:04 pm

yeah those 3 fans will def be quiet </sarcasm>

http://www.thermalright.com/new_a_page/ ... ooler.html

I can vouch for the HR-03 GT. Currently my idle temps are 44Â°c with the fan on minimum.

Nudz · Post by **Nudz** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 2:40 pm

syrian_gamer wrote:yeah those 3 fans will def be quiet </sarcasm>

http://www.thermalright.com/new_a_page/ ... ooler.html

I can vouch for the HR-03 GT. Currently my idle temps are 44Â°c with the fan on minimum.

Are those temperatures with a 260 or a 280?

I don't want to hijack your topic, but I'm also very interested since I just got a 280 card DIRT CHEAP so I picked it over the 260, but I'm worried about noise.

Nakama · Post by **Nakama** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 12:48 pm

Hey,

Didnt want to start a new thread.
But how many noise does a GTX 280 make on idle?
I dont really care about the noise when I am gaming or using the pc. But when I am not using the PC I want it to be silent. I am looking ad the HD4870 and GTX280, the GTX280 seem to be kinda cheap now.

syrian_gamer · Post by **syrian_gamer** » Wed May 27, 2009 6:28 pm

sorry for the most epic bump ever,

I have an 8800gt. stock clock speed

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Thu May 28, 2009 6:48 am

is it like: if you own nvidia you dont care about silence?

confusion abounds!!

It is the better card over ati for power/performance yet it lacks 10.1 acceleration which is crappy in many ways. besides that though, it kicks ati's butt from an SPCR perspective.

why is there no love or tinkering with 260 / 216's on here?

(280's would be interesting as well but their max draw is very high for me)

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Thu May 28, 2009 6:51 am

syrian_gamer wrote:yeah those 3 fans will def be quiet </sarcasm>

http://www.thermalright.com/new_a_page/ ... ooler.html

I can vouch for the HR-03 GT. Currently my idle temps are 44Â°c with the fan on minimum.

it says on the 55nm 260 config, "vrm heatsinks not included"

that's just plain dumb. what do you do about them>>>??????????

Edit: doh! you buy more stuff. Ok.

I see now, the packet below is needed item. Hm. Interesting. really neat.

Rikardo · Post by **Rikardo** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 9:40 am

Let's continue with epic bumps

I had a 8800GT with Acclero S1 running without fan (only Nexus Silent in front of P180).
Recently I purchased Palit GTX260 Sonic and I'd like to make it quieter.

I'm undecided between Prolimatech MK-13 and Thermalright HR-03 GTX. If understood correctly, neither of these can't be used the same way I used Accelero?

I have ordered Accelero Xtreme GTX Pro but haven't picked it up yet, because somehow I feel it won't be silent enough.

So please, enlighten me. What kind of setup would be nearly as silent as Accelero S1?
Any suggestions are appreciated.

SebRad · Post by **SebRad** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 12:56 pm

I have a GTX260 and with the various things I've done to it I think it's pretty quiet.
Thread about the heat sinks etc here. My whole system here.
One of the last screen shots shows the card running Furmark and reaching 78Â°C with the pair of 92mm cooling fans reaching 1050rpm. This should be around 20dB(A) which isn't dead quiet but it's not loud or an annoying noise and considering the cooling requirements of a GTX260 I think quite respectable.
Regards, Seb

cordis · Post by **cordis** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 1:58 pm

I have a thermalright hr-03 gtx on a gtx 285 card, and it's pretty quiet. I haven't tried going fully passive with it, instead I've opted to overclock it from stock 648Mhz to 715Mhz, and it stays pretty cool and stable that way. I have a fairly quiet scythe fan on it, so there isn't much noise from that, but there is some coil whine every once in a while. At stock speeds with some decent case air flow, it could probably go passive. Keep in mind though, the thing is big, it will cover 3 or 4 slots.

Rikardo · Post by **Rikardo** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 12:40 am

I think I'll go with the HR-03 GTX. I have 3 slots to spare and fourth can be arranged if necessary.

Somehow I've allways felt it is the "right" cooler for a silent GTX260

Thanks for the help.

Piet · Post by **Piet** » Fri Mar 26, 2010 5:22 pm

If you're not afraid of some DIY you could use your accelero on the gtx260. I just made a different bracket so I could mount it on mine. I have two 120mm fans on there and it works extremely well. With the fans at ~1000rpm it keeps my card at 52C while folding while being overclocked to its limit, I think it hit 60C in furmark with those fanspeeds.
I can turn the fans down to 500rpm and the temps still stay well below the stock cooler.

Drewlander · Post by **Drewlander** » Wed Mar 31, 2010 7:42 pm

I just picked up one of the Prolimatech MK-13 GPU coolers and I intend to test it out on a GTX 275. I will post what type of results I get once I have a chance to test it out in a few days.

Rikardo · Post by **Rikardo** » Wed Mar 31, 2010 9:07 pm

I got my HR-03 GTX yesterday and I must say, that Palit GTX260 Sonic is not "quite" compatible with it.

Here are the stock fans removed. At this point I began to have a bad feeling.

After removing the standard cooler, I found out that the supplied large VRM-heatsink won't fit. But I think that one is meant for the older models as there was this GTX 285/260 VRM-Heatsink-pakkage and instructions to fit them. Unfortunately, they didn't fit either. Luckily the standard cooler was separate so it could be used.

Original VRM-heatsink which I used in picture.

Second problem was with HSI-heatsink. There was this one component that would not allow the heatsink to seated correctly. At this point I thought I'd use the original huge heatsink, because it seemed that the GTX heatsink would still fit. Guess again

It might have fitted, but the heatsink wouldn't have been tight enough. Well, there was a few millimeters between the heatsink and the bracket, so not good. So, it was time to bring out the dremel!

I notched a little bit from the HSI-heatsink and it went nicely to its place.

For the rest of the chips I used the supplied heatsinks.

Currently I have zip-tied a 120mm Nexus Real Silent fan to because I still don't know how to use those Thermalrights Fan Wire Clips.

I'm still testing this setup, but it seems that GPU temp has dropped some 20 celsius.

But the fan is connected to 12v so that might be the reason.

I'm going away for the holidays, so I might post results and some pics later when I get back.

EDIT: Pics added and text edited. Seems I forgot to take final pictures.

As temps are concerned, it has been idling at 48 degrees of celcius for the last 12 hours. Before it was idling at about 72 degrees and fans were on 30%. Currently I can't here it over my two Seagate 1TB hard drives, so I'm fine with it. Have to do something to those drives though

I still have to check for how the temps and noise change if I remove the front fan and put GPU fan at 5v.

soloz2 · Post by **soloz2** » Thu Apr 01, 2010 1:13 pm

I'm very interested in this as I would love to get a cooler to make my GTX 260 passive, or even with a single quiet 120mm fan

Rikardo · Post by **Rikardo** » Wed Apr 07, 2010 12:06 am

Posted some photos and edited my last post. I have a feeling that this can be quite quiet

soloz2 · Post by **soloz2** » Wed Apr 07, 2010 2:22 am

Rikardo wrote:Posted some photos and edited my last post. I have a feeling that this can be quite quiet

thanks for the update. You can probably get better temps if you reduce the amount of thermal paste you use.

Rikardo · Post by **Rikardo** » Wed Apr 07, 2010 3:17 am

Yeah, there "might" be a little bit too much.

Might have to do something to it

kittle · Post by **kittle** » Wed Apr 07, 2010 2:06 pm

Nice work there.

now im tempted to try this on my GTX285. It still has the stock cooler from XFX. but at 40% fan speed I dont hear it. however it can get nice and toasty while gaming or folding.

Drewlander · Post by **Drewlander** » Thu Apr 08, 2010 7:26 am

I just had a chance to run some tests with a Prolimatech MK-13 and an MSI GTX 275. The installation was a breeze, I was able to use the stock heatsink for the vrms, ram, nvio chip, etc. All I had to do was bolt the MK-13 onto the GPU. I was hoping to run the GPU semi-passively, but it was getting a bit too hot for my liking. I might try and see if it will work on a GTX 260 in the configuration that I had. My case is a mATX case and it has a 800 RPM Scythe Fan mounted above the GPU. I was hitting about 92 degrees while folding, but when I placed a low speed 92mm next to the cooler it dropped my temps into the mid 60s. To run a fan like that would require doing some pretty serious modding to my case, so I haven't decided what I am going to do yet.

quest_for_silence · Post by **quest_for_silence** » Sat Apr 17, 2010 8:30 am

Drewlander wrote:My case is a mATX case

Which one is it?

Regards,
Luca

Drewlander · Post by **Drewlander** » Sun Apr 25, 2010 12:04 pm

quest_for_silence wrote:
Drewlander wrote:My case is a mATX case

Which one is it?

Regards,
Luca

http://www.lan-gear.com/microATX.php