NV Silencer 5 w/ Gainward Golden Sample 6800GT

[Manzelle]

I was wondering if the temps are better or at least the same with the NV Silencer on this particular card...
Has anyone done this?

 

[Bateluer]

Not sure if it'd be worth it, the cooling solution on the Gainward GT GS card is already excellent.

 

[Manzelle]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Not sure if it'd be worth it, the cooling solution on the Gainward GT GS card is already excellent.

I know it is excellent but it is also extremely loud...

 

[KutterMax]

I started another thread asking about this. Here is the link:

Link


Basically I'm in the same boat. I really like the Gainward card but it is noisy. I made some extra room in my case last night by taking out the game port adaptor that was hooked up to my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS. I then dropped my SB down one slot (which messed up my SB drivers...). This allowed for a little more room around the Gainward card. It seemed to quiet it down a little, but its still too loud for my liking.

I bit the bullet and ordered the NV Silencer last night. Apparently it doesn't fit well on the Gainward card because the exuast portion of the cooler is blocked by the back plate of the Gainward card. I'll take a look at it when I get it, but likely I'll end up cutting a part of the back plate of the card off.

I'll let you guys know how it turns out. I'll probably receive the NV Silencer tomorrow.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Manzelle do you use the EXPERTool software? The latest version offers fan speed control, which might help your noise problem.

 

[Manzelle]

Yeah, I use that software but during gameplay the fans are on 100% and it's very loud...

Look forward to hearing the results from KutterMax...

 

[KutterMax]

I am using the ExpexTool software. It definitely slows the fan down and helps quiet things down, but it is still a lot noiser than my old 9800 with the Vantec iCEBERQ4 fan. Also, as soon as you fire anything more demanding up, the fans spin up very quickly.

 

[Shagga]

The NV5 doesn't fit unfortunately. I have one sat here and cannot fit it because the NV5 assumes that your GT is only taking up one slot! The NV5's exhaust is blocked by the additional support bracket. I have e-mailed Arctic Cooling but have not had a reply. Which is kind of typical I suppose.

 

[KutterMax]

Shaaga,

Have you considered modding your Gainward card by cutting the metal plate covering the exhaust portion of NV Silencer?

I am awaiting the NV silencer I ordered and I am planning on doing something like this.

 

[Shagga]

Originally posted by: KutterMax
Shaaga,

Have you considered modding your Gainward card by cutting the metal plate covering the exhaust portion of NV Silencer?

I am awaiting the NV silencer I ordered and I am planning on doing something like this.

I have yes. In fact I was looking for an old PCI card that I can mod without hacking the original to bits. I Superimposed a picture of the NV5 over the Gainward Golden sample just to show someone else, you might find it useful.

[edit]

In fact I had an old Gainward Ultra 750XP GS somewhere which had dual DVI which might work. I'll see if I can find it

 

[darkswordsman17]

The endplate bracket on my card is only one slot. Did Gainward switch to a different one or something?

 

[KutterMax]

The endplate on my Gainward 6800 GT Golden Sample definitely covers two slots. I don't think it will be that hard to mod the end plate though. I guess I'll find out soon enough when my NV Silencer arrives...

 

[darkswordsman17]

Well that IMO is kinda crappy for Gainward to do, especially when they've shown they can make one that is only single slot (the endplate, not the card itself).

Yeah, good luck and report back on your findings, as I'd find the outcome to be pretty interesting. The temps on my card were pretty bad but then I put on some AS5 and they had dropped by about 7-10 degrees over having the fans full blast all the time before (7 with the fans on low, 10 full blast). After seeing other peoples temps, I had found mine to be disappointing (but not bothersome, as they were still pretty good, 61 idel, and 75-80 load). I might decide to throw an NVSilencer on there after a while if it helps sound and temps.

 

[KutterMax]

My idle temp on my Gainward with the stock cooler is around 54.5 degrees. I've heard that Gainward does a crappy job putting on the heatsink in that it often doesn't make very good contact with the GPU. I went out and bought some Artic 5 thermal paste to redo mine, but I haven't done anything yet. Instead I decided to just get the NV Silencer because the noise of the stock cooler is driving me nuts.

To be honest, I really don't expect cooler temperature with the NV Silencer, but if it can perform equally well AND be a lot quieter, then I'll be very happy...

 

[rocarpen]

Great to see this topic! This is exactly the question I too had for Arctic Cooling. I need a 6800GT with dual-DVI, and the Gainward certainly seems to fit the bill (killer reviews, too). Unfortunately, it's cooling design clashes head-on with my desire for the quiet computing.

I tried emailing AC, asking if the NV Silencer 5 would work with this card, indicating my company was looking to upgrade our workstations, and I havn't gotten any response 2 weeks later. Great job, AC.

Thanks for looking into this, folks!

 

[rocarpen]

Hmm... I got a response from AC today, finally. Here's what they have to say:

You have to remove the double bracket. In two months, our NV Silencer 5 will already come with a separate single bracket for the VGA card.

 

[Shagga]

Received an email today confirming that they will send me a new bracket. Excellent.

 

[KutterMax]

Ok, I received my NV Silencer today and I installed in onto my Gainward GT. Here is what I had to do to install it and my initial impressions.

First of all - the NV Silencer looks very nice. It has a large fan that looks a little bigger than the one on their VGA Silencer.

I took out my Gainward 6800 GT Golden Sample. I removed the Gainward fan unit and then the GPU and RAM heat sinks. I cleaned the paste of the GPU with an alcohol swab. The Gainward card used small pads instead of paste on the ram chips. I removed these.

The next step was cutting back the metal on the Gainward card that blocks the second slot (and would block the exhaust of the NV Silencer. This was actually much easier than expected. I used a sharp set of tin snips. This cut through the metal with relative ease.

I then applied some Artic Silver 5 to the GPU and RAM chips. The instructions recommended a thin layer to the GPU and a thicker amount to the RAM chips.

I think mounted the NV Silencer and screwed down the four screws. So people have suggested that you need to play with the tension on the screws to optimize cooling. I haven't done this yet.

The next step was reinstalling the card into the card and booting up. Everything worked fine.

The first thing I noticed is how much quieter this card is - what a relief. The noise of the Gainward stock fans was a major problem for me.

I will have to run some testing to see how the cooling performance is. I also need to spend a little time and tweak the screws. After this I post what temps I'm getting.

I hope this helps you guys out.

 

[Manzelle]

:camera:s?

If it doesn't look too ghetto I may consider this for mine...

 

[KutterMax]

As long as you are a little careful cutting the metal plate blocking the second slot, it looks fines. The NV Silencer ships with a cover for the exhaust slot - basically a typical empty slot cover except it has a bunch of wholes in it to allow the air to vent through.

I definitely need to tweak the heat sink though. I left my machine running overnight and the idle temp on the GPU is 61 degrees which is about 5 or 6 more than what I had with the stock solution. There have been a few threads on this and basically you need to tighter or loosen the four mounting screws to get the most effective cooling. The screws are easy to get at in my Coolermaster Wavemaster case without having to remove this card.

 

[KutterMax]

I'm contintuing to play around with the NV Silencer. So far I still haven't been able to get optimal cooling from it. I've adjusted the screws a few times - mainly tightening them down further, but I'm still getting GPU temps as high as 64 degrees when the system is just idling. When I play Doom 3 at Ultra speeds, I get GPU temps in the high 70's.

The card has been stable and I haven't had any problems with artifacts, but I would like to get a little better cool b/c I'm still a fair bit off of what I was getting with the stock Gainward GT fan.

 

[KutterMax]

Well I've finally got the NV Silencer working how I want it.

It turns out that I you need to use a fair bit of thermal paste with this cooler. I found a few other threads discussing this.

When I first installed the NV Silencer I put a thin spread of Artic Silver 5 on the GPU and a little more on the memory chips. However the cooling was not very good (see above posts).

So I removed the card, cleaned off the Artic Silver 5 and reapplied it. This time I just put a blob on the GPU and each memory chip. I then screwed the heat sink onto the card - this time I ensure I tightened the screws all the way.

And...it worked. I'm now back in the mid 50 range when I'm not 3D gaming. 3D gaming brings it up to the mid 60's - much better than the 80+ I was hitting!

The NV Silencer is a great mod for noisy 6800 GT's, such as the Gainward card. The two keys to the install appear to be putting a good size "blob" of thermal paste (use Artic Thermal 5 if you can get it) on the GPU and RAM chips, and tighten down the screws all the way.

Hope this helps.

 

[Manzelle]

Ordered mine the other day...should be here around Wednesday or Thursday...I'll let you know how it goes...

 

[DEFORMER]

Quote from KutterMax---
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So I removed the card, cleaned off the Artic Silver 5 and reapplied it. This time I just put a blob on the GPU and each memory chip. I then screwed the heat sink onto the card - this time I ensure I tightened the screws all the way.
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Hello, I just joined this forum so that I could post, but I have been lurking around watching this thread for awhile.

I just bought a new system, and I also decided on the Gainward 6800GT "GS" card, but it is easily the loudest thing in my system, I can hear it across the room in 3D-mode, although I tend not to care in games.

Anyway, I am very encouraged by what you are saying about this cooler. But, could you be more specific about the amount of AS5 you put on all the chips? I hear things about "half a grain of rice" and so forth. I personally am with you, I get a good feeling coating the whole thing, although I use a very thin layer. When I was installing my Zalman 7000a on the CPU, it actually says to coat the whole thing, and then actually wipe it off with a non-lint tissue (not actually "clean" just wipe excess" so that you are left just filling in the pores/imperfections in the metal. I also spend a bit of time "rubbing" the heatsink against the CPU to make it even. This idea of just putting a blob on and that's it seems like the lazy way...but maybe not.

Also, I am surprised that you say to tighten the the screws "all the way" when it is known that they can break off on this cooler. Were't you worried about this?

I have been trying to get an e-mail through to Arctic to ask when the coolers w/ upgraded screws and dual-slot plate will be available, but I am getting impatient and am tempted to just get one now. But if it really works best with the screw all the way down, maybe it is better if I wait...? I also don't much care for cracking the GPU core either.

Before seeing the relatively good reviews on this cooler, I was simply going to take the dremel out and cut away much of the front of the red heatsink-fan unit on this card and mount a pair of 92mm mans on it that would blow about 4x the air volume and be as quiet as my case fans. Basically just enhance their existing design. but yes, this would look strange and turn it into a 3-slot card. Not that I have need for any other slots or anything.


----------------------
Deformer

 

[KutterMax]

When I first installed the NV Silencer I put a thin layer of the Artic Thermal 5 on the GPU and a slightly thicker amount on the RAM chips. I spread this out very carefully and evenly and then applied the heat sink. The result was very poor cooling. I then tightened down the Silencer and I continued to have poor cooling.

It was then that I searched around on the net some more and found an article saying that you should use more Artic Thermal 5 and apply a blob of it rather than spread it out. I figured I had nothing to lose and sure enough it worked great.

I certainly used more than a grain of rice worth - more like 4 or 5 grains of rice.

As for tightening the screws, I'm pretty sure that the latest NV Silencers don't have the same screw breaking problem that the first ones did. That being said, I tightened it down securely but I did not use excessive force.

Hope this helps. Swapping out the Gainward cooler for the Silencer will make your machine WAY quieter. I'm really loving this combo now.