So my machine is much quieter thanks to the new (fkn enormous) passive cooler on my 4850, but it’s not quiet enough! Now I want to replace my one bigass case fan with something that doesn’t sound like an Xbox 360 when it turns on. Is there anything I should know before just buying a decent-looking aftermarket one that fits and is rated well? Brands to look for/avoid? Should I just go to HardOCP or Anandtech or whatever and look up some reviews?
I’m going to put on a 40mm Scythe fan onto my passive 4670 since it runs to 105 degrees Celsius at load.
40mm? You must enjoy the sound mosquitoes make
What cooler did you put on your 4850, and what’s the ramsink solution? Having trouble with the latter.
Noctua fans are pretty nice, but also not cheap either. I did the passive thing with my 4850 when I got it (Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 rev2), and then the case fans started to bother me, so a few months ago I picked up a couple Noctua NF-S12 (120mm/1200 RPM) fans, and now the noisiest things left in my case are the PSU & the hard drives. Ordered the fans from “coolpc.com” (click & win), had no problems, and they were the cheapest prices I could find on the net for them at the time.
It’s for spot cooling, you fucktard. 14dba won’t be audible either.
In any case, I replaced it with a 120mm Noctua at 5v blowing down onto the heatsink.
The Arctic Cooling Accelero coolers come with RAM heatsinks.
However, Enzotech makes RAM heatsinks.
http://www.enzotechnology.com/bmr_c1.htm
http://www.enzotechnology.com/bcc9.htm
I used the Accelero S1 Rev. 2. I didn’t have a problem with ramsinks; the small (1.5 cm square or so) heatsinks that came with it were enough to take care of the VRAM chips and the voltage regulators both. Apparently there are two different versions of the Rev 2, though, only one of which comes with the proper ramsinks for the 4850. It really wasn’t that bad of an install; it just took me forever because I’d never attempted that kind of PC surgery before. GPUZ says that all 3 of my temps (GPU, VRAM, voltage regs) hang out around 45-47 C under load now. It’s awesome.
Thanks for the links, rei & mlatin!
I might try those tall Enzos. The typical tiny blue ones you see aren’t cutting it.