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Lighter and Cooler Graphics Card Cooler
Joey Braff writes "Max did a great guide on converting a cpu cooler into a graphics card cooler. Produced better results than expensive graphics coolers even though its lighter and cheaper. Test results available."
Who the hell is Max?
It's not supply and demand, because high-end cooling units probably get used as much with graphics as CPUs, at least in expensive desktops.
Maybe the just reckon that that sort of gamer has more money to blow on overpriced stuff to allow the graphics go faster?
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Considering Thermalright already makes an almost identical version specifically made for graphics cards which doesn't take up as much space, and probably doesn't cost much more (or maybe even less), what's the point? The one made for GPUs seems to be better anyway, since it only rose 35 deg. C w/ a 6800GT (with is much hotter than a 9800 Pro).
Sheesh, the mod blocks off three or four of the boards PCI slots! Who needs a RAID or Wireless card when you've got such high graphics power!
Bork Bork Bork!!
How cheap can you be? A Zalman VGA cooler costs $25 at Newegg, takes up 2 PCI slots including the PCI-E/VGA, and cools the card almost completely silently. How many people have 5 free PCI slots on their motherboard to waste on an oversized VGA cooler of questionable usefulness? The thing is not even near silent since they use a noisy 80MM fan to do the cooling.
Temperature and noise are going to be major factors in computer design as the PC moves from the desktop to other locations in the house. A Celeron with 256MB RAM is already a tremendous workhorse for video, audio, etc. I am in the process of creating client-server based media centre and my prime concern is heat and noise; not power and memory, those are cheap and easy to come by.
Why is everyone so worried about cooling? Assuming, like the majority, you're not overclocking, as long as you GPU doesn't burn out it will give the same performance no mtter how hot it is.
The stock fans already fitted are more than sufficient to make sure it won't melt down so why waste money?
is still one of the cheapest and most effective methods to lower heat. Few PC cases are properly designed with heat dissipation in mind. The blast-furnace temeratures of the Pentium 4 has driven many to search out inexpensive solutions. Before spending money on admittedly effective, but costly, hardware such as water cooling, it is well worthwhile to explore the benefits of proper ducting:
http://overclockers.com/tips1193/
http://overclockers.com/tips1187/
The TT SI-97 costs about $45 CDN, while a VGA Silencer costs about $30 CDN. I use a VGA silencer and it's a pretty nice product, so I'm curious why it was not included in the benchmarking.
Oh, a lesson in history from Mr. I'm my own grandpa.
I've got the impression that most people/companies who build cooling systems for computers, don't have the most basic clues about fluid dynamics, and this article is no exception.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Great idea. Keeps the video card ice cold, but you need to free up 5 PCI slots, and take out the motherboard, powersupply, hard drive, and CD-ROM to make room. Worth every penny!
TFA had at least two huge banners for me that pointed to known malware sites:
http://www.spywarestormer.com/
http://www.errorguard.com/
(the sites are very similar, btw)
That's ain't 'cool'.
throw new SuccessException("Sig read successfully");
This thread may not be the most appropriate place for my wish...but I still wish some company would just focus on making components that do not require active cooling.
As I recall, ATI's Radeon 9600 could be run without any fans, and makes a fine graphics card. I reckon that, with the advances in technology, we should be able to get much better performance today.
A similar argument applies to CPUs. The G4 in my iBook performs fine, and the fan is almost always stationary. This CPU is a a number of years old now, surely today we can do even better.
And I'm sure there is a market for fanless systems. The number one complaint I hear about hardware these days is that it's noisy. The only noise I hear coming out of my computer is from the CD drive (and the hard drive when I listen carefully).
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
My case temps were hovering around 50C, and my GPU temp was hitting 80C (playing Half-Life 2). Honestly, I wouldn't care much, except my GPU started glitching. It glitched enough it became quite annoying. I already have a Zalman video card cooler for it, and it moves a lot of air quietly, it just seemed to me like that blowing 50C air over the video card isn't going to cool it as effectively as room-temp air.
So I kicked my case fan up to full speed, and it solved the problem. Case temps are now around 40C and the GPU hits about 75C. Glitching is gone.
But the case fan is too loud this way (even though it is a 120mm) so I got a new one, and a fan controller. I'll dial down the speed to compromise on temp and noise.
If I didn't have this stupid 6800 ULTRA video card, I wouldn't have any problems with temps.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95