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What happened to silent graphics cards?

Mattus

Mattus

Mattus

Soldato
Joined
30 Sep 2003
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I have an 8800GT with a silent Arctic Cooling Accelero cooler on it. When I got it a couple of years back, the coolers were all the rage. They're great because they're cheap and you can either run them passively or just strap a 120mm fan on.

Need an upgrade, and I was tempted by the GTX260 that OcUK have on special offer this week. But I just can't find a cooler to fit it that looks anywhere near silent. Arctic do one, but it's about £40 and has three fans on it, which is going to be anything but silent. Thermalright do a nice heatsink, but it's also expensive and I can't even find anywhere in the UK that sells it.

I just want a big, cheap-and-nasty heatsink that I can cable-tie a fan to. Why does nobody make these any more?
 
i guess they are not efficient at removing the heat from the card ...so they strap on a fan that spins so fast that its like a hurricane !!!! lol could always watercool it :) be silent then
 
True, but I can bet that my Accelero heatsink with DIY 120mm fan cools at least as well as the stock leaf-blower HSF on the 260!
 
Because the 200 series already has a big chunk of fin array beneath the sheath... and it needs all of that and a decent fan to shift air... and unlike previous generations its a lot harder to remove the sheath/stock cooling.

If you want silent cooling with a 200 series card your gonna have to go to something a bit more extreme - probably water cooling.
 
Geckovich said:
4870 with an arctic cooling accelero twin turbo is nice and quiet.
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Cool, sounds like that's the best option then. What kind of temps do you get in games?

Bradley8988 said:
Both the gtx 216-260 and 285 iv owned are both silent.
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Even under load? And is that silent, or just fairly quiet? The cooler looks pretty noisy to me.
 
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Shrug, Ive gone from 4870 to GTX260 to GTX280 in the past year. 4870 was pretty bad noise-wise, GTX260 was even worse but that was nothing compared to this GTX280, absolutely terrible noise in some games when the fan speeds up to 2600-2800RPM. The noise penetrates even into my headphones.

Looking at the aftermarket coolers, it seems there's really only few choices (Akasa Freedom Force, Thermalright HR-03 and maybe Zalman VF 1000), but they are all quite expensive. Any good round-ups out there for aftermarket coolers? I'm either going to sell this GTX280 and get a 4890, or buy a better cooler for this. Not sure if 4890 is any better though :)
 
If you're lucky enough to get one without the coil/capacator whine (I wasn't) the stock GTX 260 cooler is pretty quiet, and I'm someone who's fussy about noise.

I run the fan at 35% at all times which gives temps of 40-50c idle, 70-75c under full load, it's quieter than my 2 case fans (Noctua NF-S12 120mm @ 800rpm) which are supposed to be some of the quietest fans around.
 
PaulM said:
If you're lucky enough to get one without the coil/capacator whine (I wasn't) the stock GTX 260 cooler is pretty quiet, and I'm someone who's fussy about noise.

I run the fan at 35% at all times which gives temps of 40-50c idle, 70-75c under full load, it's quieter than my 2 case fans (Noctua NF-S12 120mm @ 800rpm) which are supposed to be some of the quietest fans around.
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Those are all im using in my case too (Noctua NF-S12 120mm), very pretty quiet certanly quieter than more than 1 7200rpm harddrive, while its not seeking.
 
Mattus said:
Cool, sounds like that's the best option then. What kind of temps do you get in games?
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The cooler has 3 settings. Run from the cards fitting same as the stock coolers, 12V from molex and 7V from molex.

Running off the board the card was as good as silent, however temps were comparable to the stock cooler.

At 7V the card was still quiet (a little quieter than the stock fan at desktop speeds) with the added bonus of not spinning up under load and fairly low temps (hitting mid 60's at most).

At 12V the card is definately audible and louder than the stock cooler at it's idle speeds, but again the speed doesn't ramp up and temps were great (mid 50's under load).

Oh, if you want the best of both worlds I suggest connecting it via the PCB the same as the stock fan but upping the fan speed to 7V speeds via catalyst or Riva when you game to keep the card nice and cool.
 
Crossfire a pair of HD 4770 cards with the thermalright V2 ultra with 2x slow spinning 80mm fans (will need slots with 2 spaces inbetween). That will be quiet and give very good performance.

The accelero with 3 fans is a lot quieter than stock, each one makes little noise.
 
In a similar train of thought, I've been wondering why nobody produces completely passive coolers for the likes of 295s / 4890s.

I'd happily pay a few bob extra for a four slot tall lump of alloy with no fans if it actually worked. Can it work? Any engineers around who might be able to shed some light? :)
 
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