Quietest High End

Marvin · 23 Jan 2011 at 22:07

Vegeta said:
Yes. And Gigabyte had a Direct CU cooler which I hear good things about.

That's Asus isn't it? EG: Clicky

Vegeta · 23 Jan 2011 at 22:08

Yes. Yes it is.

bhavv · 23 Jan 2011 at 22:31

The gigabyte, asus and MSI GTX 460 coolers are all brilliant and silent under full load as well.

I'm sure they will be carrying those coolers over onto the upcoming GTX 560 cards as well, those would be very good cards for the performance if you want silent coolers.

The Halk · 23 Jan 2011 at 22:34

This is basically what I was after when I made the thread... who has a good non-reference cooler on their cards.

As far as the high end goes...

nVidia 580 and 570, and ATI 6970 and 6950

The latest cards are the most energy efficient, which means they'll dump less heat and should be quieter.

Out of the 4 different cards... the

580 has the Gainward "Good".
570 has none
6970 has none
6950 has MSI Twin FrozR

As much as I'd like to spend loads of money on nice stuff, I can't seem to see past the 6950. Plus I should refuse to buy anything branded as "good' on principle

Marvin · 23 Jan 2011 at 22:53

To be fair, the reason why very few of the 570/580s have aftermarket coolers is because the stock cooler is very much praised for its ability and silence.

Check out TechPowerUp!s review of them: GTX570 reference GTX570 aftermarket GTX580 reference

The loudest under load of them all is the Palit with the non-reference cooler.

bhavv · 23 Jan 2011 at 23:28

This one is probably what you want:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-113-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752

tommybhoy · 23 Jan 2011 at 23:38

The Halk said:
This is basically what I was after when I made the thread... who has a good non-reference cooler on their cards.

As far as the high end goes...

nVidia 580 and 570, and ATI 6970 and 6950

The latest cards are the most energy efficient, which means they'll dump less heat and should be quieter.

Out of the 4 different cards... the

580 has the Gainward "Good".
570 has none
6970 has none
6950 has MSI Twin FrozR

As much as I'd like to spend loads of money on nice stuff, I can't seem to see past the 6950. Plus I should refuse to buy anything branded as "good' on principle

Have you heard about the new PowerColor PCS++ HD6950?
It has custom twin fan cooler and reportedly comes pre-flashed unlocked to a 6970 on one of the bios settings!

http://www.techpowerup.com/138794/PowerColor-Announces-Radeon-HD-6950-PCS++-Graphics-Card.html

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/new...radeon-hd-6970-for-the-price-of-hd-6950!.aspx

Vegeta said:
What's quiet to you may differ to what's quiet to someone else. It's 100% subjective.

I agree, I have had various zalman coolers and AC coolers fitted to all my previous gpu's. Although they improved noise levels at idle, they were still audible over my other quiet case fans at desktop. I even had a 4870 toxic which still very quiet, I could still hear at idle(I could be wrong but I would imagine nvidia 5 series might be louder than the toxic fan) I bought the AC 5870 extreme for my 5870 and at long last no noise at idle.

Anyway, it now sits proudly on a flashed 6950

(it needed a few extra heatsinks as the 5870 vrm sink didn't fit) although most are saying it's silent at idle, imo if I can hear it over my case fans, then it's not silent.
The quietest stock cooler I have ever used was on a 8600gt when I got a loan of one when I had to rma the toxic, but that was a passive one

, wouldn't it be heaven if all gpus came with passive coolers.

pingu666 · 24 Jan 2011 at 00:13

some fans are just noisier than another of the same type, and its not just airflow noise, typicaly gfx card fans are poor, motor noise wise

appletree · 24 Jan 2011 at 00:19

kmufc77 said:
^You must have something wrong with your ears then.

The 580 is very quiet,have you used a 580/570?

It is quite funny how different people can give different evaluations of "quiet"

I think the only way to not make it completely subjective is to always mention other components that are participating in noise floor of the system and then say the card is clearly louder / inaudible / etc. over noise floor of the system. (Other not completely subjective way could be comparing relatively to noise levels of certain well known fans at given rpm) So here comes mine, yet another opinion about noise levels of GTX 580: Just from reading reviews that measured the noise levels it was obvious to me it will need aftermarket cooler, however I was still shocked how loud it was at idle when I heard it with my own ears. It was by large margin the loudest component in my system and very annoying during night, actually louder than my bluray drive (properly slowed down) And the lamest thing of all - you can not control fan below it's default 40% (maybe with bios flash you could but I was not sure if it would help) I bet that noise floor of my system is fairly low for a typical gaming PC and "quiet" is very high on my priority list so bear this in mind while interpreting lines above. Now with aftermarket I am happy again.

Helios1234 · 24 Jan 2011 at 00:47

I've been using a gtx570 and it's very quiet, more so than the amd cards. It was as quiet as my noctua NH-c14 at idle if that's any indication.

Nelly · 24 Jan 2011 at 00:55

Helios1234 said:
I've been using a gtx570 and it's very quiet, more so than the amd cards. It was as quiet as my noctua NH-c14 at idle if that's any indication.

I don't want to derail this thread but you have used GTX 570 and 6950>> flashed 6970, so my question is:

The 6950>> flashed to 6970, what speed does the fan run at at idle? 24%? is that inaudible? Reason I mention is because the 5850 I used to have was idle at 21%.

Also when say playing games on the 6950>> flashed to 6970, what speed does the fan increase to? is it very loud?

tommybhoy · 24 Jan 2011 at 00:56

Helios1234 said:
I've been using a gtx570 and it's very quiet, more so than the amd cards.

Which ones?

Helios1234 · 24 Jan 2011 at 01:04

Nelly said:
I don't want to derail this thread but you have used GTX 570 and 6950>> flashed 6970, so my question is:

The 6950>> flashed to 6970, what speed does the fan run at at idle? 24%? is that inaudible? Reason I mention is because the 5850 I used to have was idle at 21%.

Also when say playing games on the 6950>> flashed to 6970, what speed does the fan increase to? is it very loud?

I'll post the results tomorrow. I have all the fan speeds noted down on Excel. I have also got the actual hd6970 to compare it to.

tommybhoy said:
Which ones?

The hd6970. The gtx570 was a reference inno3d card that comes pre-overlooked at 800mhz.

tommybhoy · 24 Jan 2011 at 01:05

Nelly said:
The 6950>> flashed to 6970, what speed does the fan run at at idle? 24%? is that inaudible?

Depends how loud your cpu/case fans are.

Nelly said:
Also when say playing games on the 6950>> flashed to 6970, what speed does the fan increase to? is it very loud?

About 70%. Imo yes it's too loud for me at that speed, but I hate noise! That's why I put the AC 5870 extreme cooler on it.

Randomface74 · 24 Jan 2011 at 01:07

5870 Vapour-X is practically silent, not sure if anywhere sells them now though.

THEY SHOULD !

tommybhoy · 24 Jan 2011 at 01:14

Helios1234 said:
The hd6970. The gtx570 was a reference inno3d card that comes pre-overlooked at 800mhz.

Did the 6970 break or did you just not like it?

Nelly · 24 Jan 2011 at 01:15

The 5850 with normal cooler was virtually silent and only slightly audible when playing games but thats if I didn't have any sound on.

tommybhoy said:
About 70%. Imo yes it's too loud for me at that speed, but I hate noise! That's why I put the AC 5870 extreme cooler on it.

That seems incredibly high, I reckon their was bad contact between the Cooler / Gpu.

I've gone mad and got a 6950 coming tommorow, will see for myself.

The thing was I had problems with my GTX 570 in terms of games and video settings but I've fixed all the issues lol. :eek:

I just needed to tweak each game profile as some didnt like 16x 32x AA/AF (old games)

tommybhoy · 24 Jan 2011 at 01:23

Nelly said:
That seems incredibly high, I reckon their was bad contact between the Cooler / Gpu.

I don't think so, most folks will probably say it's not loud during gaming(most tend to defend their gpus). I'll shut up now everyone will probably think I've got a noise disorder

Nelly said:
I've gone mad and got a 6950 coming tommorow, will see for myself.

The thing was I had problems with my GTX 570 in terms of games and video settings but I've fixed all the issues lol. I just needed to tweak each game profile as some didnt like 16x 32x AA/AF (old games)

Now you have sorted it out you could DSR it.

Nelly · 24 Jan 2011 at 01:45

tommybhoy said:
I don't think so, most folks will probably say it's not loud during gaming(most tend to defend their gpus). I'll shut up now everyone will probably think I've got a noise disorder

To be honest I am totally pro ATI when it comes to graphics cards, always prefer them but as it stands this Nvidia GTX 570 is totally amazing, it's like finding the holy grail of graphics cards, reminds me of when I bought the 8800GTX.

Nvidia have really done a good card it can't be denied, everything works as it should, it's so quiet and overclocks well without getting loud.

tommybhoy said:
Now you have sorted it out you could DSR it.

Yeah true, now it's coming I'll try it out and give an honest opinion, the reason I bought a 5850 previously was because it was a quiet card that is one of the most important things for me.

tommybhoy · 24 Jan 2011 at 02:42

Nelly said:
To be honest I am totally pro ATI when it comes to graphics cards, always prefer them but as it stands this Nvidia GTX 570 is totally amazing, it's like finding the holy grail of graphics cards, reminds me of when I bought the 8800GTX.

Nvidia have really done a good card it can't be denied, everything works as it should, it's so quiet and overclocks well without getting loud.
Yeah true, now it's coming I'll try it out and give an honest opinion,

Are you going to flash it? It is so simple, it literally takes 1 min! Then 1 min back to stock if you use the batch files from techpowerup. Then you could compare them.

I was going to get a 570 and was just about to pull the trigger when the news broke out about the bios flash, and at £214 v £300+ at the time, there was only going to be one winner for me. I also kept my AC cooler from the sold 5870 it was replacing, so it was win win for me.