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7970 aftermarket cooling options

foxbat

foxbat

foxbat

Associate
Joined
9 Jan 2008
Posts
89
The stock cooler on my XFX 7970 Ghz edition performs poorly and noisily. I'd like to replace it with an aftermarket option. But which one?

My system is an air-cooled Asus P5Q-Pro in a Fractal Design R4. I am constrained by the space available.

The Arctic Xtreme, at a reported 305mm overall length is too long. Anything longer than about 290mm will impact the front drive bays, which are in use and cannot be removed.

The Prolimatech MK-26 looks almost like it could be the one, but it must not take up more than 3 slots overall including fans because my second PCI-e slot is occupied by my PERC-4 SCSI RAID card. Asus advises that when a single graphics card is used that it should go in the upper PCI-e slot, so I can't swap them around to create more space.

Is it possible for the Prolimatech MK-26 to be a 3-slot solution with fans? How many slots would it take up if I mounted those 12mm slim Scythe fans on it? What about mounting a fan perpendicular to it blowing across and towards the back. Would that work? It would have the advantage of keeping the hot air from the card away from the stack of four 15K SCSI drives that I've got at the front...

Are there any other options I haven't thought of? How about a cooler designed for another card with an aftermarket copper shim off ebay (the 7970 GPU is recessed below the cooler mount frame). From the pictures I can see of the Prolimatech, it must be using a shim to mount on the 7970 because it does not have the required 'bump' on the base where it meets the GPU so using a shim can't be too bad.

Any advice would be appreciated.

- Andy
 
foxbat said:
The stock cooler on my XFX 7970 Ghz edition performs poorly and noisily. I'd like to replace it with an aftermarket option. But which one?

My system is an air-cooled Asus P5Q-Pro in a Fractal Design R4. I am constrained by the space available.

The Arctic Xtreme, at a reported 305mm overall length is too long. Anything longer than about 290mm will impact the front drive bays, which are in use and cannot be removed.

The Prolimatech MK-26 looks almost like it could be the one, but it must not take up more than 3 slots overall including fans because my second PCI-e slot is occupied by my PERC-4 SCSI RAID card. Asus advises that when a single graphics card is used that it should go in the upper PCI-e slot, so I can't swap them around to create more space.

Is it possible for the Prolimatech MK-26 to be a 3-slot solution with fans? How many slots would it take up if I mounted those 12mm slim Scythe fans on it? What about mounting a fan perpendicular to it blowing across and towards the back. Would that work? It would have the advantage of keeping the hot air from the card away from the stack of four 15K SCSI drives that I've got at the front...

Are there any other options I haven't thought of? How about a cooler designed for another card with an aftermarket copper shim off ebay (the 7970 GPU is recessed below the cooler mount frame). From the pictures I can see of the Prolimatech, it must be using a shim to mount on the 7970 because it does not have the required 'bump' on the base where it meets the GPU so using a shim can't be too bad.

Any advice would be appreciated.

- Andy
Click to expand...

This is what you need. The Peter, officially sponsored and recommended by our own 'Uncle Pete'.

beefcakecooler_zps74e745b4.jpg


http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-023-AL&groupid=701&catid=2330&subcat=787



I'd also like to make a press release that contrary to popular belief the above image is not stored on my hard drive, or my photobucket account. Thank you.
 
foxbat said:
According to reports the 'Peter' with fans is an enormous 5-slot beast :eek:. 3 slots is the absolute max for me I'm afraid. Thanks for looking though.
Click to expand...

Sorry i got drawn up on the length.

Now there's a sentence you'll never hear me say again. :eek:
 
foxbat said:
It may have to be that one, just a shame OcUK don't stock it. Thing is I really want to make the Prolimatech fit but unless it can work under load with only a fan perpendicular to it then it's going to have to be ruled out.
Click to expand...

Please let us know either in this thread or here (http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18471131) how you get on with the Gelid as ive been looking at that myself before and always wondered how it matched up with the other aftermarket air coolers. Also interested to hear from any Prolimatech users.
 
Uncle Petey said:
The Peter works fairly well with only side fans exhausting heat. Better than the MK-26 would, since that's very wide.
Check my sig for details :)
Click to expand...

In your sig, there's a picture of it mounted in your case with two fans above blowing down through the vanes. How are they fixed on? Did it come with the necessary brackets to attach those fans together and to the case?
 
If you mean the side exhaust fans, then yes, it comes with a PCI bracket to mount those.
Does your case allow you to run fans like that?
If you check the results, it's not the coolest solution, but it does offer decent enough temps.

If it seems like a bit of a hassle, the Gelid looks like a good option.
 
It's going to have to be the Gelid for me. They seem to be as rare as hens teeth here in the UK but I've found somewhere in the states that'll ship one over for a reasonable price.
 
Let us know how you get on with the install and how the temps are foxbat. No one here has tried the Gelid yet. The reviews ive seen of it online were good. I predict it will have better vrm temps than the accelero but worse on the core but should still be a nice, quiet upgrade from stock.
 
LtMatt said:
Let us know how you get on with the install and how the temps are foxbat. No one here has tried the Gelid yet. The reviews ive seen of it online were good. I predict it will have better vrm temps than the accelero but worse on the core but should still be a nice, quiet upgrade from stock.
Click to expand...

Will do. It's probably going to take a couple of weeks to get here. My current stock cooler is ill-fitting and idles at 65C (yes, idles). I've tried re-seating it to no avail so it just has to go!
 
My Gelid Icy Vision-A arrived today so I fitted it to my 7970. The results seem good. With the (faulty) stock cooler it would idle at 65-70C. No idea what it would be under load because thermal shutdown happened at around 105C !

With the Gelid fitted idle is 33-38C and load while running the 3D Mark underwater demo is 49C. Noise at 20% fan speed seems higher than the stock fans. Don't know why, the tone just seems different, a little higher pitched than the low hum of all the other 120mm fans in my case. The fans don't seem to get noisier under load.

It's a 3-slot solution. Not 2.5, 3 exactly. This posed a problem at first because the fans snagged the ribbon cable that exits from the back of my RAID card in the other PCIe slot. This was solved by using a pencil eraser to gently prop the cards apart by a few mm.

Some tips for fitting, since the included instructions aren't great:

Fit the bracket to the bottom of the HSF first, not last. With the bracket on you can offer it up to the card to see which of the RAM sinks need special treatment because ... the one at 9 o'clock needs the sink that's slightly lower than the others and the one at 6 o'clock needs the sink with only half its vanes to avoid the aforementioned bracket. The thermal pads are a pain in the a**e. Ignore the instructions that say to apply them to the ram chips first - apply them to the heatsinks first instead.

Bottom line. Very pleased with the temperatures, wish it were quieter at idle.
 
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