6000+ & 4870 cooling

[BeakerUK]

Hi folks, time to post after years of lurking. I Normally hang out on a couple of other tech forums


I'm looking to quieten down my existing rig. At the moment I've got a 6000+ on the stock cooler, and the fan is starting to whine. So that needs swapping out before the fan dies. I'm looking for suggestions if anyone can help? At the moment I've got the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro as the main competitor.

I'm also looking to quieten down the Sapphire 4870. Great card, but it sounds like a hair dryer!
On this I'm also looking at Arctic Cooling gear, but an Accelero Twin Turbo or an Accelero S1 Rev2 with a set of the Turbo fans. I'm not bothered about a BIT of noise, but even the X1950XTX I had previously was quieter than this!

I'm not a fan of purely passive cooling (and I don't mind a little noise), the case I've got (Thermaltake Bach-VX) won't take more than 2x120mm, so it should both take those HSF setups, and it's not really a case that is suitable for passive.

Anyone got any better suggestions in the under £30 per item range? I've linked stuff up so better minds than mine may hopefully take a closer look.

Thanks in Advance

 

[dirtmountain]

Here's a pretty interesting article by HardwareCanucks about fitting an Accelero S1 rev.2 to a 4850 and their pretty impressive results. You can use the small twin turbo fans, or attach a quiet 120mm fan to it.
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/8299-sapphire-radeon-hd4850-512mb-graphics-card-review-23.html
supposed to fit a HD4870 also.

 

[BeakerUK]

Cheers, seems it's a reasonable choice for the VGA. The "Problem" I'm having at the moment is the CPU HSF, at one time it was a hunt round multiple retailers for bits to make things up. Last time I was on a high-end cooling system I had to make up my own water cooling (Fluval fishtank pumps FTW!), but these days I'm seriously out of the loop.

 

[Superhal]

i made a little hsf buyer's guide:
http://forums.amd.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=11&threadid=100223&enterthread=y

i got the sunbeamtech core contact freezer with ic diamond 7, and it's better than i expected (or reviews said):
................................Room Temp..........Case Temp........CPU Temp
1.06v idle (cnq)..............30C.......................35C.................35-36C
1.33v load (see sig).......30C.......................40-41C.............54C

regarding noise, as a general rule, the faster the fan, the higher the decibels, and vice versa. so, if you don't need the extra cooling, the best way to control noise is to lower the fan speed. it's relatively easy to control the gpu fan speed with speedfan, rivatuner, or whatever ATI control software you have (nvidia uses NVMonitor.)

 

[BeakerUK]

Thanks Superhal, but not really what I'm after. I'm an old-school overclocker from the days you made everything up, and spent half your time with a scalpel, conductive paint, magnifying glass and a steady hand. I'm really after personal experiences, or links to decent articles on relevant stuff.

I'm not sure about the CPU HSF because I've no personal experience with that model, and the guys here are likely to be more knowledgeable on current tech than me. As said, my last experience with high-end cooling involved a 2500 Mobile Barton, fluval fish-tank pump and a heater element from a Vauxhall Astra.

 

[Superhal]

but, if you're thinking about an air cooled hsf (like the artic cooler), there's much better designs out there. for example, the one you listed with a 90mm fan will perform about 20% worse than one with a 120mm fan.
http://www.frostytech.com/top5heatsinks.cfm

but, if you're looking for homebrew watercooling, i'm sure somebody will chime in soon. from your post, it seems like you're looking for air.

 

[BeakerUK]

but, if you're thinking about an air cooled hsf (like the artic cooler), there's much better designs out there. for example, the one you listed with a 90mm fan will perform about 20% worse than one with a 120mm fan.
http://www.frostytech.com/top5heatsinks.cfm

Awesome, that rocks. Many thanks!!!

but, if you're looking for homebrew watercooling, i'm sure somebody will chime in soon. from your post, it seems like you're looking for air.

Those days are long gone. I lost interest when It started being a case of buying a set kit from one place. Half the fun of overclocking was the strange contraptions we used to come up with

 

[blashyrkh]

The 4870 does indeed sound like a hairblower if you set it any higher than 50%. THe thing is, I have mine set (saphire 4870) at 35% when gaming which is barely audible and the temps are tops 58 C. Not bad right? Great card by the way. With cat 8.9 I haven't had a single issue in any of the games I play.

 

[BeakerUK]

Cheers for the help folks. I've ordered the Accelero Twin Turbo, and I'm going to do some slight work on the CPU HSF I already have.

i.e. Home made adaptor cone to mount onto the top of the existing HS, then i'll mount a 120mm fan on top of that. probably make it into a horn shape and see if I can vent it straight out of the back of the case. Been a while since I did anything like this!

 

[BeakerUK]

Got to post this here, and it's related.

Tonight my mind is occupied with personal stupidity, essentially my own. I took it upon myself to upgrade the cooling in my case today. I had ordered a new GFX card HSF (Arctic Cooling Accelero with a set of the "Turbo Fans"). This seems to have solved the noise issues with my PC at least, I can hear the CD Drive spinning now. This would seem like a Good Thing, however I can't hear the HDDs spinning. I'll Explain a little more.

My case is a pretty bog-standard enthusiast case. It's a Thermaltake Bach-VX, a reasonable amount of expandability, and when I built the machine up i was really careful allowing for airflow. However with time, and typically for a geek there have been multiple hard disks added. To the point I had pretty much run out of space when I added the 4870 in a few weeks back, so pulled 2 disks out to make space, leaving me with 1xSATA RAID array(500Gb), and 1xPATA 133 RAID(640Gb). These are really nice to have for the speed. However I've made a decision and I'm not having more than 2 drives in the case so I can take the HDD cage out, and the 140mm fan will blow straight through the case with obstructions. To this end I've got together some cheap bits to build up a central server with the spare IDE drives, and I've upgraded the RAM in my main box to some OCZ Reaper. I figured that this was a Good Way To Do Things.

So, I've got the case in on my lounge floor, I've got the new HSF to mount on the GFX card, and the new RAM to install. All is going well, the spare box is sat there waiting for its donor bits to be dropped in, and some OS to be put on it. So I open up the desktop case, and see that it's even messier than I remembered from last time I had the case open (putting the 4870 in). It looks like a birds nest, there are wires wrapped round wires, and I can't make head nor tail of it. No biggie, it's getting laid back out again neatly. I undo the thumbscrew, pull the wires off, and extract the cage. Then I start sorting the wires out. So I'm sat there for about 2 hours re-laying the cables. All is good now. It's ready to take the GFX Card again, so I make sure no wires catch, mount the new heatsink and fit it to the case (I forgot what a pain in the arse that can be). Now HDDs, "now where did I put them" I'm thinking as I turn round, and knock the HDD cage with the HDDs still mounted in it off the table. instinct takes over, and I grab it, relief overcomes me. I smile to myself, sigh and curse myself for my stupidity, more with relief than anything else. At this point I took a step back, and fell arse-over-tit on a screwdriver sending the HDD Cage flying straight into the radiator behind me (which now has a nice line of 4 black marks where the HDDs hit it, must paint before the landlord sees it), then out of the door into garden. The HDD Cage is still mint, but it looks like I'll need 4 new drives. The interface boards are all crunched up, and one of the SATA drives looks like I've taken a hammer to it.

So tomorrow it's off to a computer shop, don't know where and don't care. I was at Scan today considering new Drives, but figured I had plenty. I've got a single Fujitsu80Gb SATA left that was in a box, but not really going to match up to a pair of decent drives in RAID. Now excuse me, the bruises on my leg are starting to hurt, and I now need a drink.

This thread is brought to you in conjunction with Oh ah heck, and doh!

 

[BeakerUK]

A quick one for those in the know. Got the Accelero installed, and a shiny new install of XP64. Just checking a couple of temperature monitors and it seems that the GFX card is running at 47*C on idle, and climbs to about 63*C under load. This is before the Thermal Compound has bedded in yet as well. Seems reasonable to me, but just wanted to double check with folks these are OK temp. I'm happy enough to take the hit here, as the machine is now so quite I can actually hear the new drives ticking away!