Extreme Air Cooling: Our Five-Slot (Quiet) Radeon HD 7970

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The good news is that it’s possible to cool AMD’s flagship Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition to less than 75 degrees Celsius under full load, maintaining a quiet 32 dB(A) at the same time. The bad news? It'll cost you five expansion slots and more than $100.

Installation: Fans

Installing The Fans

This part of the EKL Peter’s installation actually does get covered well in the heat sink's manual. After all, it’s important that the fan sits securely in its position in the case. The back plate really needs to be installed correctly, as it provides a lot of stability.

Connecting The Power

We could swing for the fences, giving this setup the maximum possible cooling performance with 12 V connectors for both fans. That's not really necessary to keep AMD's Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition cool, though. You can safely choose a lower voltage and, consequently, enjoy a more conservative noise profile. Using 7 V for the fan above the GPU and a 5 V hook-up for the other one is a great compromise. Only one cheap part, pictured below, is needed for this arrangement.

This simple solution works just as well as more complicated/expensive ones. Take a look at the benchmark results on the next page to see how temperature and noise stack up.

Igor Wallossek
60 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Maximus_Delta
    Love it !! Fantastic bit of kit.
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    this cooler is the Double FF equivalent of geek pr0n.
    Reply
  • Hazle
    that is so sexy... too bad it's not compatible with a 6870, pointless as it seems (to me, at least) , but goddamn, them temps and noise make it hard not to consider the idea....
    Reply
  • jossrik
    Seems to me if you're willing to go 140$ or whatnot to cool your Gfx card, you might be interested in water cooling. 80$ for a Noctua and 100+ for this put you into cheap water cooling territory, and while you could easily spend double or more water cooling, that seems the route to take. Just my two cents.
    Reply
  • ShadyHamster
    how about comparing this with other aftermarket coolers? such as arctic coolings accelero extreme
    Reply
  • esrever
    Even tho this is a little extreme, it is still extremely badass.
    Reply
  • bak0n
    I wonder how it'll fix on my ITX motherboard? /joke off
    Reply
  • amuffin
    I'd rather have invested the money spent on this into watercooling!
    Reply
  • JOSHSKORN
    what a waste...unless a manufacturer comes up with a motherboard and case specifically made for this so you don't waste expansion slots.
    Reply
  • memadmax
    Wowzers
    Reply