x1950xt - stock: noisy & hot - which fan?

I believe a few of the ram arent cooled, if not all. Idle at 60 is high, but just a lil. Whats your ambient (inside,house) temps? Is your card dirty? Have you cleaned it lately? And how loud is it compared to when you power up your rig? If its just as loud, then your fans running 100% and thats not good unless its your ambient. Try taking the side off your rig, and running it that way. And let more cool air in. Maybe another fan blowing on the card or (with side removed) fan blowing cool air into rig. If you go with a different hsf/cooler, the air will dump into your case heating up all your components, instead of the stock cooler which pushes all the hot air out the back.

If its any like my 1900xt, its loud. Reading that link you provided, the guy there says its a lil quieter than the one I have. As long as your temps on the card arent going too high, then this is how loud this card gets, its a loud card and hot. nVidia pushes only half the heat out of the case, the way my 8800GTS is setup, it allows for more airflow or thruput of air. Keeps the card cooler, less noisy, BUT, dumps heat into my case. If you feel this wont be a problem, then go ahead and get a cooler, but for me, I live with the noise. BTW, so not to confuse, I own both a 1900xt 512mb and a 8800GTS

Don't know if this helps or not, but I shoehorned a Arctic Cooling NV5 onto my X1950pro Agp and am having good results. (Yes you read that right, an Nvidia cooler on an Ati card)

The problem with this approach is that this cooler is no longer available.

I have a hard time understanding why more aftermarket vga coolers aren't designed to exhaust out the back of the case.

I recently put an aftermarket heatsink on a 9800xt, no fan just a huge heatsink, seemed to do the trick. I only changed this as my cousin's hsf was failing. You would need a decent sized case though as the 'sink is bigger than the card. The model I used was rated for all ati cards excluding the x1950xt.... (And quite a few Nvidia cards as well)

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.php?idx=138

Yeah, you will need a fan. Good luck with it.

The idle temp is now 44º, with load (ATITool) running just over 70º. This is about a 20º reduction.

I mounted the heatsink around the card (there are 2 fitting methods) and the fan draws the heat up, and out the top/back of my Antec P180.

As a quick reference, I got the temps before and after at the CPU heatsink.

BeforeStock (heat venting out the expansion slot) ~32º
After HR03 (heat venting into case) ~38º

Its a lot quieter.

Some pics here for reference [on how not to install!]

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/james [...] s/x1950xt/

Fir st attempt involved mounting the fan at the bottom and blowing upwards [and causing some major air currents]

On my second attempt, switched the heatsink/fan round and drew the air up instead (rig_install_final3&4.jpg) Much better result with airflow and case temps.

However, in both scenarios, the whole thing takes up 4 expansion slots - not bothered at the moment, but I wouldnt have room for any other cards if required. Id like to see this used in a dual-card config