My VTX3D Radeon HD 7950 X-Edition was making some rattling fan noise, and when gaming, it sounded like a turbine, so after some research, I found that it was not that hard to replace them with some bigger and quieter fan.
The only thing that I was wondering is if it was possible to keep the fans controlled by the graphical card like the original one.
So first I found that the two original fans was PWM fan with 4 pins connector, so I searched some fans that had the same connector.
I opted for two Arctic F12 PWM fan, apparently they are quiet (0.3 Sone), have good air flow of 74 CFM (126 m³/h), a good RPM range (600 - 1350 RPM), are PWM controlled, are chainable, and are cheap (6€).
So I decided to post my work, in case it could help someone who have the same problem ...
My setup before
The unmodified graphic card
Removed the heatsink and the fans
Removed the fans from the heatsink
Cleaned the GPU
Cleaned the heatsink, then cable tie the new fans on the heatsink
Put some thermal paste
The only difficulty was that the 4 pins PWM female plug was smaller than the 4 pins PWM connector of the Arctic F12 fan...
So I made this custom cable, with an old graphic card, my stock intel CPU fan and a screw terminal
And then connected the whole thing like this
And put the GFX card back
Now I've an idle temp 1°C hotter (before: 39°C-43°C, now: 40°C-44°C) (by the way it is quite hot in my room), but in furmark benchmark it is now 10°C cooler (before: 76°C, now: 66°C) and in game at full clock (925 MHz) it is 7°C cooler too (before: 76°C, now: 69°C).
The fan in idle is at 30%, and in full load is only at 50% (when the GPU is at 69°C).
But the best of that replacement is that even in game, it makes absolutely NO NOISE, it's outstanding !
The only thing that I was wondering is if it was possible to keep the fans controlled by the graphical card like the original one.
So first I found that the two original fans was PWM fan with 4 pins connector, so I searched some fans that had the same connector.
I opted for two Arctic F12 PWM fan, apparently they are quiet (0.3 Sone), have good air flow of 74 CFM (126 m³/h), a good RPM range (600 - 1350 RPM), are PWM controlled, are chainable, and are cheap (6€).
So I decided to post my work, in case it could help someone who have the same problem ...
My setup before
The unmodified graphic card
Removed the heatsink and the fans
Removed the fans from the heatsink
Cleaned the GPU
Cleaned the heatsink, then cable tie the new fans on the heatsink
Put some thermal paste
The only difficulty was that the 4 pins PWM female plug was smaller than the 4 pins PWM connector of the Arctic F12 fan...
So I made this custom cable, with an old graphic card, my stock intel CPU fan and a screw terminal
And then connected the whole thing like this
And put the GFX card back
Now I've an idle temp 1°C hotter (before: 39°C-43°C, now: 40°C-44°C) (by the way it is quite hot in my room), but in furmark benchmark it is now 10°C cooler (before: 76°C, now: 66°C) and in game at full clock (925 MHz) it is 7°C cooler too (before: 76°C, now: 69°C).
The fan in idle is at 30%, and in full load is only at 50% (when the GPU is at 69°C).
But the best of that replacement is that even in game, it makes absolutely NO NOISE, it's outstanding !