Cooler for Graphics Card, will it fit?

[Kefir_Tribe]

I know this might be a long shot but...

I have a Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro Advantage 256 MB graphics card and I'm looking into buying a new cooler fan for it. This one is the one I've been looking at. My card is not listed in the compatibly list though, so the question is; will it fit? The 128MB version seems to be on the list of compatible cards.

 

[***F1ZZY***]

wouldn't it be covered under this?

ATI Radeon 9*** Series

 

[Tetras]

Don't think it matters quite so much as some coolers cos it only fits to the core area, rather than needing to cover a lot of the PCB like an arctic.

 

[Kefir_Tribe]

Thank you for your replies. I've looked at a picture of the card and compared it with pictures of the fan and I suspect that a capacitor will interfere with the clip. I solved a similar problem with a processor cooler from Zalman by cutting the clip a bit though and the same trick should work here. So I've ordered one.

 

[manveruppd]

Seems a bit of a waste to use that thing on a 9600 - those cards didn't run very hot, I had a 9600XT and it never went above 39 degrees even under load. If silence is what you're after you could probably get a completely passive heatsink and it'll work.

 

[Kefir_Tribe]

Seems a bit of a waste to use that thing on a 9600 - those cards didn't run very hot, I had a 9600XT and it never went above 39 degrees even under load. If silence is what you're after you could probably get a completely passive heatsink and it'll work.

It is indeed the silence I'm after. You might be right about the passive cooling thing. I've canceled my order (since its weekend it wasn't shipped yet). I found this one, which looks cheap and promising. I don't have any case fan so the heat sink outside might be a good idea.

According to the manufacturer it fits all ATI and nVIDIA cards except for; "(NOTICE: CL-G0009 does not support VGA card with HSI bridge chip)". Now what's that?

 

[Polarbear]

It's the bridge chip that allowed agp designed gpus to run in pci-e slots (or was it the other way round ). Anyhow it's a separate chip that requires cooling that that heatsink won't cover. The 9600 series don't have one so it's nothing to worry about.

 

[Kefir_Tribe]

It's the bridge chip that allowed agp designed gpus to run in pci-e slots (or was it the other way round ). Anyhow it's a separate chip that requires cooling that that heatsink won't cover. The 9600 series don't have one so it's nothing to worry about.

Ah, thanks a bunch. Looks promising then.


edit: Do you guys think this will work good without any chassis fans? Because it seems rather pointless to get a passive cooler instead of a fan, just to install a chassis fan that sounds just as "much". Besides I don’t think it’s possible to install a fan in my chassis without modifications.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

if the zalman vf900 fits then get it. you can take the cooler with you to a new gfx card if you decide to upgrade.

 

[manveruppd]

edit: Do you guys think this will work good without any chassis fans? Because it seems rather pointless to get a passive cooler instead of a fan, just to install a chassis fan that sounds just as "much". Besides I don’t think it’s possible to install a fan in my chassis without modifications.

Depends... What's your CPU and what are your current case temps? If the rest of your system's fairly cool it won't be a problem.
And it's ALWAYS better to have a case fan as you can get a large, slow spinning one that would barely be audible, whereas most graphics card coolers are small and whiny (though I DO have that Zalman cooler and if I have the fan at the low setting I can barely hear it over my HDD and 2 case fans).

 

[finlay666uk]

if the zalman vf900 fits then get it. you can take the cooler with you to a new gfx card if you decide to upgrade.

vf900 fits pretty much anything aside from AIW cards, havent found a card it wont fit yet (should even fit my spare X300)

 

[manveruppd]

you can take the cooler with you to a new gfx card if you decide to upgrade.

That's a good point actually, the saving should be worth a little bit of noise if you can stand it!

 

[Kefir_Tribe]

Thanks for your replies.

if the zalman vf900 fits then get it. you can take the cooler with you to a new gfx card if you decide to upgrade.

vf900 fits pretty much anything aside from AIW cards, havent found a card it wont fit yet (should even fit my spare X300)

I'm afraid it won't fit my card.

"The product cannot be installed on Matrox VGA cards, NVIDIA PCX 5***, NVIDIA Geforce 7800GS/6600 AGP Series and ATI Radeon 9550/9600 Series."

-http://www.zalman.co.kr/

Depends... What's your CPU and what are your current case temps? If the rest of your system's fairly cool it won't be a problem.
And it's ALWAYS better to have a case fan as you can get a large, slow spinning one that would barely be audible, whereas most graphics card coolers are small and whiny (though I DO have that Zalman cooler and if I have the fan at the low setting I can barely hear it over my HDD and 2 case fans).

The CPU is an AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1600+. I have no idea of the case temp but the CPU runs around 54 degrees Celsius according to BIOS. It's cooled by a Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu. The case is an old Packard Bell which I guess could be called midi tower.

The PSU is, since very recently, a Zalman ZM360B-APS. I can hear a slight humming from it and Zalman claims it to be almost noiseless. So it's either...

a) Running a bit hotter because of the case temp, which makes it run its fan a bit faster.

b) Running a bit hotter because of that the computer is quite demanding on the 5 and 3,3v rails (while the 12v is ridiculously over-dimensioned), which makes it run its fan a bit faster. (no idea if this is valid, just a personal guess)

c) Not as quiet as Zalman claims.

So a case fan might be a good idea but the only way of getting one into the case is by cutting a hole in the side wall. The side wall is a rather thin sheet of metal which might vibrate. So I don't know which way to take.

edit: Any advice on brand and size of a case fan?