High End Silent Cooling For Graphics Cards 199
SpinnerBait writes "With all the competition these days in the 3D Accelerator market, Graphics
Card OEMs are doing anything they can to differentiate their products in a sea
of competitive solutions. Recently board designs are getting even more
exotic, with brightly colored PCBs, high end heat sink and fan combinations and
even flashing lights for the case modders out there. However, a relatively
new trend is Quiet Computing.
HotHardware has an article up that showcases two new Radeon 9600 Pro and 9800
Pro cards from Sapphire Tech, that have rather impressive fanless coolers on
them that are virtually silent. Great stuff for those of you gaming in the
library."
What would excite me is a lower price (Score:5, Interesting)
IS IN EXPENSIVE!
Imagine that graphics card marketing departments. Keep your fluff and give me a lower cost card!
Of other note, a card shardard for laptops so I could upgrade my PowerBook G4 would be huge for me, expecially as laptops become the PC of choice for the younger, more mobile 20 somethings.
Sacrificing a PCI slot?? (Score:3, Interesting)
I always thought in some computers the AGP slot and the 1st PCI slot had a shared IRQ, so this wouldn't be an issue...unless im mistaken, of course
I glad this is happening.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not as great as you might think (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that NVidia were actually on the right track by blowing out the GPU heat into the outside air rather than into the case. Of course, their fan was a monster, but I imagine that this could be done better with a cooler GPU like ATI's.
Re:Not as great as you might think (Score:3, Interesting)
the key imo is watercooling for high-end cards, and generating less heat for the mid/low-end cards. AFAIK some
For DIYers on a budget (Score:5, Interesting)
Just take any old stock AMD or P4 heatsink and chop it in half. I didn't have proper heatsink fasteners on my card so drilled it out and zip tied it down. The bottom is still smooth and the paste was properly applied.
The only problem was getting the stock fan off as it was glued on. I put my card in a ziplock bag
and chucked it in the freezer for half an hour. Then I used a screwdriver to pry off the fan assembly (with an old library card to protect the pcb).
Check it out (it's not a swiss watch but it gets the job done).
Pic 1: http://fullcircletraining.com/images/quiet1.jpg [fullcircletraining.com]
Pic 2: http://fullcircletraining.com/images/quiet2.jpg [fullcircletraining.com]
You can see I did the same thing to the northbridge on the motherboard.
happy modding.
j.
I don't even know where to begin. (Score:3, Interesting)
And 80% of games are in 2 dimensions. What's your point?
I realize this statistic is fictitious and was hastily pulled from my ass; so was yours.
Most PC applications don't require much more than a 300 MHz CPU and 96 MB of system RAM. What's your point?
HDTV is being pushed as a standard but most people don't even have S-Video inputs on their televisions. What's your point?
Some people like technology. Some people like quality better, speed faster, and they want it to be quiet. Sure, these things may chug 50-60W (arbitrary figure, it's probably much, much lower) when they're in use playing a 3D game, but people don't 3D game to to and from work every day.
And is it really "wasted"? There's a noticeable and beneficial effect. It is by no means the same as driving an SUV alone using the rear cargo area to haul groceries and your daughter's broken bicycle.
Additionally, you're ignoring the other aspects of SUVs which make them infeasible as car replacements, such as the high rollover rate, the tendency of SUVs to "trip" when hitting small animals such as foxes on the road, or sometimes when the pavement so much as changes texture. SUVs are also regulated as "light trucks" so that they don't have to conform to the same federal safety regulations as normal vehicles. This is due to lobbying on the part of SUV manufacturers, and consumers still buy these deathtraps at premium prices despite how little effort went into making them safe.
The gas consumption and wastefulness of SUVs are only the tip of the iceberg.
Besides, you're ignoring the fact that it's a matter of adoption, and scale which determines waste -- you didn't see us yammering about SUVs much when 15000 people drove them because they weren't popular enough to cause a problem.
Re:silent fans but noisy games.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I was surprised that when I was testing an ASUS V9520 Video Suite at work, the fan didn't spin until I started playing ga... err running benchmarks. I thought I broke the fan
Does someone remember the quiet Hercules 64KB? (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean the whole computer world has evolved, into GPU's that are faster than CPU's 12 months old, using big smart busses (128, 256 even 512 bits), using DDR3 technology...
I had a XT, and i spent almost the same daily hours playing that i currently spend today... is just me or is the same but bigger, faster and stronger?
Re:What about the rest of the computer? (Score:3, Interesting)
For around $150 total, the improvement was pretty dramatic. The only sound I hear from my box now is the hard drive, and if that ever starts to become an annoyance, there are options [plycon.com].
The real future (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.directron.com/fanless.html
It's a Zalman case that is coming soon. It will cost a lot - but the entire case acts as a big heatsink. They claim it can easily cool the hottest GPU & CPU's out there, assuming your PC room isn't a furnace, I presume.
Here's a japanese link verifying Zalman as the people behind it. http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/hotline/2003
This is the holy grail for silent computing enthusiasts!
Re:Typical lifespan? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you just answered your own question. :-) In my experiance fans are _the_ most unreliable components in my systems. I'm using quality fans now and I've replace all fans on my GFX cards with heatsinks.
I imagine that a heat pipe would last much much longer than any fan. For a start they have almost no moving parts (well, no fiction really), and most of all no _exposed_ moving parts. (The pipe contains a liquid that moves/pumps heat by changing to a gas and back again.)
--
Simon
I'm not impressed with sapphire's build quality (Score:3, Interesting)
I bought one of these for my GF3 and found the kit well made, and easy to install. Overall a good setup.
I later bought a Sapphire 9700 Pro Ultimate Edition with a ZM80 pre-installed (just like the cards above). The heat synch was improperly aligned, the conduction tube was bent away from the sync and almost NO thermal compound was evident between the tube and the heat sync plates. (Zalman's install instructions stress the importance of maximizing contact area between the plates and the tube)
I WOULD buy another ZM80, but I wouldn't buy another sapphire card with one pre installed.
IMO stay away from these cards. buy a regular version, and install a passive cooler yourself.
Re:Sacrificing a PCI slot?? (Score:2, Interesting)
On the Subject of Sapphire Cards (Score:4, Interesting)
It may have not come with a fancy heavy heat sink, but it sure heated up to the point of automatic self-destruction pretty well without much prompting from myself. Needless to say, it was pretty dissapointing.
When I got the replacement in the mail I had to cool it with a smaller house fan until I went out and purchased a pci fan and placed it RIGHT NEXT to it.
So, no wonder they're pushing these big cooling rigs.......
I have one in my system! (Score:2, Interesting)
The mainstay was getting a silent case(Antec Sonata-Highly recomended) and powersupply. The case has some sound reducing material in the front and a quiet power supply. Using a large heat sink on the processor and a low RPM fan i keep my CPU very cool. I put the Zalman VGA cooler on my 9500 pro and it not only runs great, but actually it also runs cooler.
The only case fan i have is a large low rpm fan out the back. It all runs like a charm and seems to always be lower than room temperature. (Damn AC is on the opposite side of the apartment.)