5850 coolers

[krooton]

I recently bought an MSI Twin Frozr 5850 to crossfire with my XFX jobby, but am annoyed at how much better the heatsink performs.

The Frozr maxs out at around 62ºC, but the piddly cooler on the XFX hits 76ºC.

It is this one:

I reseated with some MX-3, but it made no difference, the fan and heatsink just aren't good enough.

Aftermarket solutions are either pricey (not worth shelling out £30+ when I could just sell the XFX and buy another Frozr for the same outlay), or complicated like modding an Accelero S1.

Looking at the above layout of the XFX, the black sinks on the right cool the VRM yes? If so, it doesn't look like there are any sinks for the RAM, which is a bit concerning!

I've had a look at the Accelero L2 Pro, but it looks pretty much the same as my egg cooler, but without any heatpipe.

So getting a Rev 2 S1, modding the fins near the DVI shroud, and sticking on a left-over Nexus fan I have looks like a good move, but I read about people bricking their cards with improper VRM cooling. Would the black sinks on there at the moment still be fine if I go down the S1 route?

Thanks!

 

[jewii]

ah the horrible xfx cooler design, i had that design for my Hd 4870, it couldn't dissipate sh**.

i'm presumming the same problems apply with the 5850 and the 4870 xfx cooler design.
firstly, this card has an unusual cooler fitting meaning only a selection of HD 5850 coolers will fit!

things i did to help, was remove the upper casing, doesn't do anything! and mount a fan somehow to blow air into the heatsink. people has said the antec coolspot fan: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SY-000-AN can be Very handy for this.

76C is hot? i knew my cooler was horrible when i was playing games and it was at 100 C and my case had full ventalation!

 

[krooton]

76C is hot? i knew my cooler was horrible when i was playing games and it was at 100 C and my case had full ventalation!

Well compared to the MSI it is, and given that the room is only 18ºC, come summer-time things won't be too good.

So is the GPU location on this version different to other 5850s, rendering the larger coolers moot?

 

[jewii]

well gpu coolers are fitted through holes which the positions seem to be universal for most HD 5850's except the xfx edition :S

i don't think you get much info from here, i think a long google search will have to do. i gave up and mounted some fans to it, it dropped 10 degree's stopping the fan going on 100% on load.

if you got it from ocuk, you may have the right to return it. if you cross-reference the manufactoring codes with the xfx site, you may see that you got the wrong for the edition of the card and that my friend is illegal.

 

[ThomasTheTankEngine]

I've got one of these, and the cooler isn't terrible. It's not very good, but it does the job.

It's running in crossfire with a reference design 5850. When I tried the cards individually, this one was about 10c hotter. In crossfire with this card on the bottom, both of them reach about 70c on full load (the lower card heats up the top one). In the summer this was about 5c higher.

You're right, the ram doesn't have any heatsinks on it..... but it appears it doesn't need them. It happily runs the max overclock in afterburner (without enabling unofficial overclocking) of 775/1125. I've had this card since the summer and it's been running at those speeds since the day I got it with no problems.

You're pretty much in the same boat I'm in. I didn't want to pay £30+ for a new cooler, so I just figured I'd stick with the noise and heat..... as neither are at a dangerous or unbearable level.

 

[krooton]

Yeah, I wouldn't be as fussed if I had a normal case resulting in crossfire location heat issues, but these are mounted 90º in my case so swapping slots results in a mere 2ºC improvement.

Both idle at 30ºC, but the Frozr stays both cooler and quieter at load.

 

[krooton]

Saw an interesting idea on another forum

Remove plastic shroud and fan. Zip-tie a 12cm fan on to the heatsink.

*scratches chin*

 

[Mr Krugga]

That's a horrible cooler you have on the XFX card