High End Silent Cooling For Graphics Cards

SpinnerBait writes "With all the competition these days in the 3D Accelerator market, Graphics Card OEMs are doing anything they can to differentiate their products in a sea of competitive solutions. Recently board designs are getting even more exotic, with brightly colored PCBs, high end heat sink and fan combinations and even flashing lights for the case modders out there. However, a relatively new trend is Quiet Computing. HotHardware has an article up that showcases two new Radeon 9600 Pro and 9800 Pro cards from Sapphire Tech, that have rather impressive fanless coolers on them that are virtually silent. Great stuff for those of you gaming in the library."

Comments

What would excite me is a lower price

[amichalo]

I must be the only one out there but instead of the fancy packaging, colored circuit bords, flashing lights, included CD's filled with shareware games, and ... as of this article ... cooling devices fit for the Red October, I would like a graphics card that ...

IS IN EXPENSIVE!

Imagine that graphics card marketing departments. Keep your fluff and give me a lower cost card!

Of other note, a card shardard for laptops so I could upgrade my PowerBook G4 would be huge for me, expecially as laptops become the PC of choice for the younger, more mobile 20 somethings.

Re:What would excite me is a lower price

[Anonymous Coward]

Prices are never going to get cheaper. Lowest performing card(for gaming crowd) will be <$75(Radeon9200, GF4-MX) Entry-level cards will always be $75-125(Radeon9500, GF4-Ti4200). Highest end will always be $300-400(Radeon9800, GF-FX). (Will increase due to inflation obviously).

Why? The chipset designers(ati/nV) try to create one entry for each segment without too much overlap WRT pricing and performace between segments. No one is going to produce cards with older technology when they can use that manufacturing capacity to build other, newer, more profitable cards. Once production has ramped up it never gets cheaper to produce the cards. It does not cost any more to produce a top end card today than it would be to build a Voodoo3.

Sacrificing a PCI slot??

[whiteranger99x]

Now i noticed that the 9800 Pro is so big, considering the size of the heat sink to disperse the heat generated, users would have to give up the adjacent PCI slot.

I always thought in some computers the AGP slot and the 1st PCI slot had a shared IRQ, so this wouldn't be an issue...unless im mistaken, of course :P

Re:Sacrificing a PCI slot??

[Martin Blank]

Considering that most sound card companies and virtually every NIC company I've researched has advised not putting their cards in the first PCI slot, it kind of becomes moot anyway. Moving those off to other slots leaves modems and what are essentially niche devices -- SCSI, tuner, USB/FireWire, and other add-in cards.

This is news?

[worst_name_ever]

I could already have told you that pipe technology greatly enhances enjoyment of the pretty colors and swirly lights so common in today's high-end games.

I glad this is happening..

[nother_nix_hacker]

...because my graphics card is louder than my sound card at the moment! :)

Re:silent fans but noisy games....

[rokzy]

the problem with noisy graphics cards isn't the noise they make during noisy games, it's the noise they make the other 99.8% of the time

Not as great as you might think

[Dr. Spork]

The problem is that the heatsink is just dumping heat into the cavity of your case, and you will need some serious (and loud) fans to remove it from there. I hate to say it, but only Apple is in a position to make PCs that have wholistic quitet cooling systems installed.

I think that NVidia were actually on the right track by blowing out the GPU heat into the outside air rather than into the case. Of course, their fan was a monster, but I imagine that this could be done better with a cooler GPU like ATI's.

Re:Not as great as you might think

[rokzy]

nvidia was on the wrong track. they HAD to blow the air out of the case because it was so damn hot it would overheat (but that was just due to ridiculous overclocking to compete with ATI). and blowing air will always be noisy, especially if blowing it through small holes.

the key imo is watercooling for high-end cards, and generating less heat for the mid/low-end cards. AFAIK some .13 micron ATI cards only need passive heatsinks.

Virtually silent?

[chabotc]

..fanless coolers on them that are virtually silent..

Care to explain how graphic cards with no fans, no moving parts at all are virtually silent? The cooling solution is totally passive, and thus makes no noice at all.. if it does, something went very, very wrong and it's probably the sound of the heavy cooling solution breaking your motherboard or graphic card ;-)

Nothing to see here

[bahamat]

No big news. All they did was take a Zalman vga cooler and package it with the card.

The only thing that really makes this significant, is that if it comes with the card you can't void your warranty by placing something "too heavy" on it.

What about the rest of the computer?

[gagy]

I've been sleeping next to noisy computers for most of my life. Back in the BBS era I'd have things download overnight, so I'm rather used to to all the noise. But if I was overly concerned with the noise, I wouldn't really care about the vid. card. There are much noisier components in a system, mainly the powersupply and some hard drives can be quite loud. People are now installing two or three case fans as well, adding to the cunundrum. I really don't think that adding one more noisy object to the mix would change things.

I know that some people spend their fortunes on quiet powersupplies and sound insulation and these cards might be what they're looking for, but for the most part they're a small nieche market.

What about...

[Enigma1625]

water cooling? It is becoming more popular and I can only imagine prices will start to become more reasonable. Completely silent, and more effective than fans/heatsinks; what more could you ask for?

Re:What about...

[PurpleBob]

I still wouldn't want to do it though... I, like the great grandparent, am very wary of having water cursing through my computer.

Water molecule #38572039471928372: "God damn it - time to cool the fucking CPU again. Why the hell doesn't that piece of shit stop putting out so much fucking heat? Jesus."

Same old Zalman cooler

[steronz]

It should be noted that the same coolers have been available from Zalman for some time. That they're now packaged from the factory with this cards should hardly be newsworthy.

For DIYers on a budget

[johnny6vasquez]

The sound was driving me crazy one day so I got out the hacksaw.

Just take any old stock AMD or P4 heatsink and chop it in half. I didn't have proper heatsink fasteners on my card so drilled it out and zip tied it down. The bottom is still smooth and the paste was properly applied.

The only problem was getting the stock fan off as it was glued on. I put my card in a ziplock bag
and chucked it in the freezer for half an hour. Then I used a screwdriver to pry off the fan assembly (with an old library card to protect the pcb).

Check it out (it's not a swiss watch but it gets the job done).

Pic 1: http://fullcircletraining.com/images/quiet1.jpg

Pic 2: http://fullcircletraining.com/images/quiet2.jpg

You can see I did the same thing to the northbridge on the motherboard.

happy modding.
j.

virtually silent?

[verbatim_verbose]

Huh... virtually silent? Maybe it's just me, but I don't see how a large block of aluminum can be anything more than completely silent. ;)

Fan reliability

[BWJones]

The other issue we are going to be having is fan reliability. In servers, we can tell if fans go bad through notification. However, when the fan on my GeForceTi gave up the ghost last week, I only knew about it because I was in the case adding a card. With the proliferation of fans in computers, I would like to see either 1) built in software checks to identify fan status, or 2) more efficient passive cooling techniques that don't require fans. Having a truly silent PC on your desk is pretty nice as illustrated by the Apple Cube connected to a flat panel. Totally silent as opposed to my other workstations (Apple included).

nothing is quieter than ice cubes

[AssFace]

When my system is running hot, I'll toss a couple of ice cubes onto my video card.

Totally silent.

Usually then my system crashes and goes down for a day or so and during that time it almost never overheats.

Pretty efficient if you ask me.

The real future

[Gossy]

This is where it's really at.

http://www.directron.com/fanless.html

It's a Zalman case that is coming soon. It will cost a lot - but the entire case acts as a big heatsink. They claim it can easily cool the hottest GPU & CPU's out there, assuming your PC room isn't a furnace, I presume. :)

Here's a japanese link verifying Zalman as the people behind it. http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/hotline/20030 712/etc_tnn500a.html

This is the holy grail for silent computing enthusiasts!

Re:Let's get serious on quiet

[Simon]

Have you tried suspending your drives? It can be done cheaply and makes a big difference.

There are some good drives these days that are very quiet. Seagate Barracuda series drives are legendary among the Quiet PC crowd. Although other manufacturers are also bringing out quiet drives.

If you really want a silent computer you might as well get some information:

How to Quiet the Thing
Silent PC Review

--
Simon

Re:Typical lifespan?

[Simon]

Does anyone know how long the typical lifespan of such a heatsink is? Would it survive longer than a typical fan-based heatsink? I run my boxes 24x7 and it seems that in a dusty environment - such as my appartment - all fans need to be replaced every year or so.

I think you just answered your own question. :-) In my experiance fans are _the_ most unreliable components in my systems. I'm using quality fans now and I've replace all fans on my GFX cards with heatsinks.

I imagine that a heat pipe would last much much longer than any fan. For a start they have almost no moving parts (well, no fiction really), and most of all no _exposed_ moving parts. (The pipe contains a liquid that moves/pumps heat by changing to a gas and back again.)

--
Simon

Tom's Hardware Review

[Chymaera]

Tom's Hardware also has a review of this Zalman heatsink and the Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9700 PRO Ultimate Edition.

Re:Let's get serious on quiet

[Cordath]

Or...

You could save a lot of effort and just build a quiet PC. In my experience it's a lot cheaper and easier to eliminate noise by the careful selection of noise generating components rather than building large enclosures. Enclosures you might think would block noise can often actually *amplify* it by acting like a horn or resonator.

Anyways... Here are my current picks for a quiet PC:

Overclocking: Don't

CPU Heatsink: Heatsinks change so fast that giving you specific models is pointless. However, as a general rule, if it comes with it's own fan, chances are it's too freakin' loud. Stock HSF combo's from Intel and AMD are right out. Look for a hefty heatsink with a lot of surface area made out of a conductive metal like copper. You can find heat dissipation spec's for most heatsinks online. Odds are you will have to spend 50 bucks or so here, but it's one place not to cheap out. Don't forget to use thermal paste when you install it!

CPU Fan: If you have a good heatsink installed properly you won't need a freakin' hoover to keep your CPU running cool. The minimum ammount of airflow you'll need is going to depend on how much heat your CPU generates and how well your heatsink dissipates heat. I've found that even a 20CFM (cubic feet per minute) fan will do well even on a high end athlon if you have the right heatsink. For comparison, some stock fans do upwards of 120CFM.

Graphics Card Cooling: Go passive. Buy a card with a passive cooler or replace the fan. Those little wussy fans they put on graphics card may look innocuous, but many are cheap pieces of crap that will develop a high-pitched and loud whine in short order. Cheap fans, no matter how small, are the bane of silent computing.

Motherboard Cooling: Ditto. If it has a fan, replace it with a heatsink or don't buy it in the first place. The latter is my personal choice.

Hard-Drives: Once I would have written pages on suspension techniques, enclosures, network booting, etc. to tell you how to avoid noisy hard-drives. Now I can just tell you to buy Seagate Barracuda's. While other manufacturers are closing the gap, these suckers still have a hefty 6dB lead on anything WD has, and a wider lead for any other manufacturer.

Case Fans: Guess what. 20CFM fans are all you need here too. I usually have one blow into the case over the hard-drives and another blow out of the case by the CPU cooler, but there are other configurations you can use. The key thing here it to pick high-quality quiet fans. I swear by 20CFM Panaflo's. Three of them (2 case fans, 1 CPU fan) will not be audible over even a very quiet PSU. These fans are about $15 CAD, so aren't bank breakers either. You can get fans that move more air, but don't bother unless you find you need that extra airflow. If you do, add more low-CFM fans to work in parallel rather than installing high-CFM fans. Note that Panaflo makes other 80mm fans with more airflow, but they are much louder. Stick with the 20CFM fanss.

Power Supply Units: If you've built the rest of your machine properly, the fans in your PSU will be the *only* thing you normally hear. I consider PSU's to be the one item that is lagging behind the rest out there. You can pay a fortune for a fanless PSU such as those TK Power makes, or you can buy a PSU with too much fan noise. Things are getting better though. Antec's Truepower PSU's are high-quality units that are pretty quiet and are also very affordable. They're lightyears ahead of anything Enermax makes anyways. I'd try one of them out first and see if it's too loud for you before resorting to more extreme measures. After that, you can try opening up the PSU and modding the fans to run on lower voltage or use different fans. If all else fails, you can go fanless, but it will cost you bigtime!

Water-cooling: Since the PSU in a system built under these guidelines is all you'll hear, if you aren't willing to watercool your PSU then there's no point to it at all. Watercooled PSU's have yet to go mainstream, so this is heavy modding territory. I have encountered many watercooling systems where the water-pump alone is noisier than three of my systems. Watercooling isn't where it's at... yet. It may be the future though.

On the Subject of Sapphire Cards

[luekj]

I recently purchased a Sapphire 9700;

It may have not come with a fancy heavy heat sink, but it sure heated up to the point of automatic self-destruction pretty well without much prompting from myself. Needless to say, it was pretty dissapointing.

When I got the replacement in the mail I had to cool it with a smaller house fan until I went out and purchased a pci fan and placed it RIGHT NEXT to it.

So, no wonder they're pushing these big cooling rigs.......