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Cooler for 6950?

Energize

Energize

Energize

Caporegime
Joined
12 Mar 2004
Posts
29,962
Location
England
Can anyone recommend to me a quiet cooler for my 6950 as I have found that it is by far the biggest contributor to noise in my system when idle at least, even though the fans are only running at 20%! When idle if I disable the fans the temperature is fine so I don't understand why they are even on by default.
 
Wow the Extreme II is pretty expensive. It would be great if I could just attach normal fans to my gpu that I can control with my fan controller because the main problem is that the fans are relatively noisy and run at unnecessarily high speed, with my controller I could have them switched off at idle and at a low speed at high load.
 
^

Could do but noise may be an issue too pete.

@Energize, you can get a gpu header pin to 3 pin adapter and run it off your controller, but it's pricey@:D~£2 if that's what you want to do:

http://www.gelidsolutions.com/products/index.php?lid=2&cid=11&id=60

BUT, if you do the above, be careful, if your not at the PC and something makes your gpu ramp up and you have it switched off...not good mate.

:)
 
I've done it with a couple of Scythe Kama PWM fans tommy :)
Up to 1800rpm which offered pretty good cooling, they're pretty quiet. At 2k rpm, the noise increased, but was still not as loud as the 5870 reference cooler I had. At max of about 2450rpm, they're on the loud side.
I had them on the Alpenfohn Peter heatsink with great results and generally kept below 2k unless I was benching for absolute best results.

You remember the ghetto mod I did with the 120mm spectre fans on the Sapphire heatsink?
My results there pretty much proved that the slim heatsink was the limiting factor regardless of fan speed past a certain point and these 92mm Kamas definitely push a lot more air than the ones you'd find on most cards, so I reckon you wouldn't need to push more than 1800rpm odd with them on a stock sink with headroom left over should it be needed.
1800rpm on these is a hell of a lot quieter than those bloody spectres lol...

Depends on how loud is too loud for the individual I guess :)
You're right about needing to be on the ball with remembering to turn them up when needed though. With that adaptor you posted and a PWM Y splitter, he could just run them off the card as you say.

Wow, that post ended up a lot longer and more convoluted than I expected :D
 
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Lol,

I was basing the fan strapping on the op having a ref 6950 and didn't think it would be enough, but you don't know unless you try.:)

Did you send your rip+ back, or did you take the hit, if you did what you using?

Good info for the op by the way, and yes, I remember your mods mate, I'm your long lost twin, I love mucking about when I have the time, the heart was pumping when I cut the fins on the Extreme, then it pumped harder when I first powered it up.:eek::D

Really should get myself a couple of those gelids myself, just in case I fancy a tinker. :)
 
True, I don't know what exact heatsink his card has, so this may not be viable if it lacks the sufficient surface area for a couple of fans.

My RIP is still here... All I need is some of the green thermal tape it came with and I'm good to go with sending it back. God knows where I'll get some unless I buy a dead card off someone. For now, I've accepted the hit, but I still have a bit of hope reserved :)

I'm using the iGPU at the moment and it's surprisingly good. Photoshop CS6 is slick and I can even play games like ME2+3 at 720p without issue. I just miss BF3 every now and then (as well as all the steam games I never got round to playing properly :o).

Either way, I doubt that any of the mods caused the card to fail and I have no regrets. I'd do it again :D Mucking about ftw!
 
I was thinking maybe just mounting 12cm fans to the gpu and connecting those to my controller, as my 12cm case fans are much quieter
 
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That sounds great, but it didn't work well at all in my experience. Ymmv of course :)

Do read the above link by all means, but to cut a long story short, 92mm fans direct all their air at the card. 120's not only block out a significant percentage with their relatively large hub area, they also miss a fair portion of the card due to being wider than their target.
The outer edge of a fan is where the strongest flow is delivered and therefore wasted.

Saying all that, I will concede that the 120mm fans I used may have been high rpm, but I found that they didn't offer great results on a heatsink anyway. Having tried them on my cpu cooler vs other fans, they didn't really cut it there either, being both louder and offering less cooling at the same speeds...

Which case fans were you planning to try?
 
Uncle Petey said:
That sounds great, but it didn't work well at all in my experience. Ymmv of course :)
Click to expand...

Not so much bothered about cooling performance, the stock is perfectly adequate as it is, I just want something quieter or at least controllable!

Which case fans were you planning to try?
Click to expand...

I've got various 92mm and 120mm fans lying around varying from 1250-1650rpm, not had a proper look at them yet.
 
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