8800gt Cooling/Warranty Question

[xGhost4000x]

I have am EVGA 8800gt 512mb and It reaches 49 idle and 70-79 with heavy load ie FEAR, L4D, 60-65 with less intense games ie M2:TW, W40k DoW.

So My question is what is the best 3rd party cooler which will not void warranty. Also is it true that I can open the card up and not void warranty? as is stated here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/248541-33-does-overclocking-evga-8800gt-void-warranty

Also I already have a 3rd party PCIe Slot cooler next to the Card.

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

 

[MMclachlan]

Read this review for a look at 13 top VGA coolers;

http://en.expreview.com/2008/09/09/review13-vga-coolers-roundup.html

I personally have Thermatake Duorbs on my stock OverClocked GTs in SLi (650/1900) and they are nice and cool - even though they came a lowly 12/13 in that review! lol In my setup the top card is about 57c, bottom is 55c when playing Crysis which is about the most intense load you can put on a GPU right now. They idle 43c and 40c (top+bottom cards)
I can recommend the TT Duorbs, as they cool well (at least for my relatively small and cool G92 chips!) they look good and are a hell of a lot quieter than the stock HSF. They also only take up 2 slots per card when fitted, whereas something like the HR-03 will take up three - this is handy if you go SLi and still want to plug a PCI card or two in!

Lastly, have you tried upping your fan speeds at all, if you are worried about temps? My original card was set to 29% fan speed by default so I used Rivatuner to dynamically adjust the fan speed up based on the temp (search net for how to do this) Using rivatuner I was able to keep the full load temps <65c just using the stock HSF.

 

[Cranky1970]

I used a zalman cu900 on my GT and it worked very well.

 

[xGhost4000x]

Interesting if its not too much to ask, I have a 360mm Case fan on the side of my Tagan El Diablo Case. Would it be more efficient to mount multiple 120mm fans? the 360 seems to not push much air.

 

[jay2tall]

Are you looking to overclock your card? or just keep it cool?

eVGA has a lifetime warranty so if it ever fries they will replace it, so why bother spending the money on a cooler?

If you are looking for more performance, and your PSU is up to par, and you have an SLI motherboard, pickup a 2nd 8800GT off ebay or somewhere cheap and run it SLI. That will give you a HUGE performance boost. That is assuming you are just looking to OC and get better performance. The thermalright cooler is $50 + a fan. You can get another 8800gt for less than $100 on ebay.

 

[pat mcgroin]

With the way my case is set up the cooling slots on my card point down and it traps heat under the card.
2 days ago I put in a slot fan that I got from newegg.
I put in in under my card and my temps came down from 80c to 62c on a full load.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835150006

 

[jay2tall]

Sweet. a $3 (+ shipping) fix. Can't argue with that. I know normally those things are a waist but hey if it works. My one buddy used aluminum drier tube in his one PC once.

 

[xGhost4000x]

I was thinking of overclocking eventually and my mobo doesn't have two pci16 slots. But after upgrading to the new Nvidia drivers my 8800gt idles at 57c which seems hot to me.

@pat mcgroin I have something similar to that but mine doesn't work very well. Maybe I will pick that up!

 

[pat mcgroin]

Yeah mine is working great. I was playing Crysis Warhead last night for 3-4 hours and my temps never went over 64c even after turning my 8800gtx up to 625 mhz. I may try a bit higher after awhile.

BTW I also put in a Silverstone 123 fan that can put out 105 cfm of air.
Its real quiet and comes with 2 bearings, a pot (w/ bracket) to adjust the speed, and all the hardware.
Turned up all of the way it sounds like your in the Everglades but even on medium it blows enough to annoy the cat when it gets near.
Great fan for $10

 

[xGhost4000x]

Unfortunately my 8800gt started to lag last night....80c on Left 4 Dead! @ 65% fan I raised it to 100% fan and solved the problem but man! I think I'm gonna get two of those coolers. Maybe It will be 2x better! Not to mention I already have a similiar fan so I can have 3 little fans next to my 8800 Maybe It will cool down when it sees all the attention its getting.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Those masscool fans seem to do ok. My 9600gt stays about 39c at idle with one underneath it, and gets into the 40's when I play Turning Point: Fall of Liberty(No crysis yet). But then I do play at 1650x1080 and high settings. Not bad.

 

[pat mcgroin]

! under the vid card seems to work best.
I dont know why they put the cooling slots on the bottom.
Dont put it exactly next to it but in the slot ! below so air can get between them as it is a exhaust fan.

here is the other one I got. Note this one has a controller on the back but other models have them on the front.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835220022

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Oh, by the way, on my temps, note that my 9600 only runs at 20% fan speed by default, pretty good I think.

 

[pat mcgroin]

Ive never played Turning point but I have been playing Crysis a lot so there is where Im getting my temps.
15-20c is a good gain.
The whole fan speed thing is getting confusing.
Different programs are reporting totally different settings with Ntune being the worst so far.
Currently Im using EVGA Precision for my fan and my overclock.
I like the interface but I mostly like the temp and FPS it shows in games.
It seems to offer the closest thing to accuracy I have found.
I had 4 different progs running with temps,fan and FPS and this one seemed to use the average all of the others so I have to guess it is close to correct.
Besides that the interface is simple and it works with all Nvidia cards.
No more guessing what the settings mean.