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Passive Graphics Card - Not for gaming

valve90210

valve90210

valve90210

Soldato
Joined
17 Jan 2006
Posts
4,313
I am currently rvamping an old computer I have (a Pentium 3 866mhz) which I use for music playback.

At present it is pretty noisy but it doesn't matter cos it only tend tyo be used when there is a fair amountof background noise anyway.

However, I am soon to be moving and will be wanting this computer in the bedroom to play music at night so I would like to make the computer as quiet as possible. I have already thought about the CPU cooler and am going to go for a Nexus AXP-3200m which I have read several reviews of which say it's very quiet.

Now my thoughts have turned to the graphics card.

It have a very old Aopen PA256 card, which is perfectly adequate for the job that I am asking the comp to do, however, it's tiny little fan is rather noisy. are there any alternative means of coolng a Geforce2 card available? I have looked about but not really found anything?

Alternatively are does anyone know of any passively cooled cards that I might be able to pick up for very little money, either new or second hand?

It really doesn't need to be anything more powerful than what I have and I really don't want to be spending anythign much.

Any thoughts much appreciated!!! :o)

Valve
 
Just had a thought....

Would the ATI 7000's be much the same performance as the GeForce 2MX???

Also, as I will be pretty much solely using the TV Output, of the card, what are the drivers like for doing this, is it easy to get it working and is it reliable?

Valve
 
Thanks for the info re the 7000. I'm not too sure about the TV out on the Geforce 2 card, it's been a while since I had a play with it, But I think I could do dual display with it. I seem to remember that it was a real chore to get it working when I first had it but later driver versions made it much easier.

I'm looking at the motherboard spec on the AOpen website but I can't see anything about the AGP voltage. ALl it says is AGP 4x, is that any use???

Valve
 
That's good to hear!!! I shall have to have a look and see if I can pick up a bargain somewhere...

That'll just leave the PSU fan...

Oh and the Hard disks....

Oh and the DVD drive....

Well I'm getting there!!!

Valve
 
Thanks for that.

Just had a bit of a look and found that you're right the 7000 doesn't have hardware T&L. But I have also found that some of the Geforce2 Cards were passively cooled, so am currently hunting down one of those.

Valve
 
Hi there

I shall be needing to sort out the hard drives as they do make a fair bit of noise. I was initially thinking about drive enclosures but I'm not sure, having read up on them a bit. Seems like they can make the drives get very hot.

I've not really looked into the coolers, I'm not really sure if they are a good idea or not, one the one hand they might dampen the drive so it doesn't transmit so much noise to the case, but on the other, a lot of them have fans, which seems to defeat the point a little.

I'll have to do some reading up. I might start by putting some soft rubber between the drives and the case where the mounting screws go to see if that makes any difference....I doubt it will tho.

All my music will be on the hard disk, when playing dvd's the drive I've got, a nice old one which is actually quite quiet so that's not too much of an issue at the moment.
 
Thta's good to hear. what sort of rubber have you used? I've got some thin, rubber sheet stuff that you can get in craft shops, it's about 1mm thick or so, do you think this would be ok?

I am using WD drives too, so to hear that yours are nice and quiet is good.

Do you mind if I ask what fan you're using? Also, I'll need to think of some way to mount the fan so it moves air across the drives as there's not much room in the case I've got.

Valve
 
that's pretty good going to get he PC quiet and still have 3 fans in it.

The route I've taken so far is to get myself a quiet CPU cooler, and I'm going to get a passive gfx card.

If I can quieten the hard disks down using some rubber strip I'll do that, if that doesn't work I'll have another think, if it does, I'll probably as you suggested, get myself a 120mm fan and mount it somewhere to blow over the HD's though I'm nt sure quite where I'll be able to mount it...

At the moment there aren't any case fans, and the mother board only supports one. would it be ok to just have one? moving air about in the case?

Valve
 
I wondered about that. I'll have to have a look at what space there is in the case for fans.

Are there any fan controllers or anything that I could use to add fans, Ie that take power from the PSU and allow connection of additional fans? That way I might be able to have a two fan setup like you mentioned...

Valve
 
The more questions I ask, the more complicated it all becomes!!! ;o)

I'm gonna need to think about this a lot. I'm gonna start with the rubber and see how that goes and what sort of temps I get and if the drives are any quieter etc.

I'll also have a look at the case tonight and see what could be done with regard to fan placement. And maybe have a good scout around for fan controllers.

Valve
 
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