Thoughts on quiet video cards

[gaslight]

I would appreciate any advice on finding a quiet video card. by quiet, I mean something that generates about the same noise as the case fans on my Silverstone Fortress FT02.

I tried a EVGA Nvidia 760 blower-type card, but returned it because of the noise. Would I need to water cool, and what are some easy to install water cooled cards?

 

[IllogicalGlory]

I've found Gigabyte's Windforce cooler (the three fan flavor) to be very quiet, and the 980 reference blower is quiet as well. I've had personal experience with both.

 

[Bubbleawsome]

Water cards have pump noise. As long as you have it in near open-air (i.e. actually open air, or a quiet fan pointed directly at it) the gigabyte will be nearly silent. It is incredibly quiet. I can't hear it over my HDD. It's there, but it blends with ambient sound. Probably registers below 20db with my case closed on it. I'm sitting about 3-4 feet away.

Otherwise the reference 980 is really quiet. I would go for the gigabyte though as it is cooler.

 

[Aikouka]

I have a Windforce 780 Ti, and you can definitely hear it when it starts spinning up. Water cooling was by and far the quietest and coolest, but it's far more expensive. While pumps do have noise, you don't normally run them at full speed.

 

[andg]

I have a r9 290 Sapphire tri-x. While it is supposed to one of the quietest r9 290 cards, I still think it is too noisy at idle, for no good reason. The card isn't hot at idle.

I ordered some cables so that I can put in a low noise resistor on the fan, perhaps that will help me out.

Some of the new nvidia card 970 and 980 have passive fan modes on idle, I think.

 

[Bubbleawsome]

I have a r9 290 Sapphire tri-x. While it is supposed to one of the quietest r9 290 cards, I still think it is too noisy at idle, for no good reason. The card isn't hot at idle.

I ordered some cables so that I can put in a low noise resistor on the fan, perhaps that will help me out.

Some of the new nvidia card 970 and 980 have passive fan modes on idle, I think.

Correct on the passive idle cards. Gigabyte doesn't do that but you can use a fancurve. You shouldn't need cables.

I have a Windforce 780 Ti, and you can definitely hear it when it starts spinning up. Water cooling was by and far the quietest and coolest, but it's far more expensive. While pumps do have noise, you don't normally run them at full speed.

I've got the WFx3 7970 and at stock it gets up to 60% fan and is fairly loud. However, it is keeping the tahiti chip at ~60c. That's no small feat. If I manually adjust it to a 35% fancurve it goes silent and rarely gets to 75c. I have to have it maxed out to do that.

 

[Aikouka]

Correct on the passive idle cards. Gigabyte doesn't do that but you can use a fancurve. You shouldn't need cables.
I've got the WFx3 7970 and at stock it gets up to 60% fan and is fairly loud. However, it is keeping the tahiti chip at ~60c. That's no small feat. If I manually adjust it to a 35% fancurve it goes silent and rarely gets to 75c. I have to have it maxed out to do that.

Ah, mine's not that good. Well, to be fair, I'm not sure if these values are directly related, but according to HWiNFO, my highest fan speed is 57% with the highest temp at 73C with a 98% core load. I think part of mine has to do with air flow. I originally used water cooling in the 900D, but now that I'm back on air, you can see why this case isn't so good for it.

 

[Teizo]

Gigabyte, ASUS, or MSI are good choices.

 

[boozzer]

the only cooler that is super loud is amd reference cooler, anything after market is pretty quiet. nv line is all pretty quiet, including the reference model.

 

[poohbear]

I've found Gigabyte's Windforce cooler (the three fan flavor) to be very quiet, and the 980 reference blower is quiet as well. I've had personal experience with both.

+1. Windforce cooler is near silent & provides much more efficient cooling than stock. Ive only bought gigabyte since.

 

[3DVagabond]

Because of the FT02's vertical orientation of the card many aftermarket cards aren't ideally suited. The Asus DCII cooler and the MSI TF cooler are both good. As are reference vapor chamber designs. Heatpipes don't operate efficiently when oriented vertically. They work better when horizontal.

 

[Cerb]

Because of the FT02's vertical orientation of the card many aftermarket cards aren't ideally suited. The Asus DCII cooler and the MSI TF cooler are both good. As are reference vapor chamber designs. Heatpipes don't operate efficiently when oriented vertically. They work better when horizontal.

They work fine in any orientation. The effects of gravity are minimal, even when present, in one.

http://www.technicaljournalsonline....PRIL JUNE 2012/ARTICLE 06 APRIL JUNE 2012.pdf

 

[3DVagabond]

They work fine in any orientation. The effects of gravity are minimal, even when present, in one.

http://www.technicaljournalsonline....PRIL JUNE 2012/ARTICLE 06 APRIL JUNE 2012.pdf

From your link:

The orientation is important for the operation of a heat pipe. Depending on conditions, a heat pipe can operate in horizontal position or in vertical position. For the horizontal position of a heat pipe, gravity has no effect. But in vertical position gravity can assist or oppose to the operation of the heat pipe.

 

[RussianSensation]

MSI Gaming 970.

 

[digitaldurandal]

From your link:

I have a vertical case and my windforce cards were quite cool. I have not measured the temperature of the 290s yet.

EDIT:

Seems that if the heatpipes have a working fluid then likely in a vertical case this could result in uneven cooling across the chip, due to the way often there will be heatpipes going in both directs from the GPU. One of the pipes will tend to go upwards which should work fine, but another will likely go downwards. If the fluid heats to the point that it rises it will bring heat back towards the GPU. I suppose the effect of this will vary depending on the path and angles of the pipes on the specific card.

 

[ZGR]

I have a r9 290 Sapphire tri-x. While it is supposed to one of the quietest r9 290 cards, I still think it is too noisy at idle, for no good reason. The card isn't hot at idle.

I have experienced quite the opposite with my Tri-X; I can't even hear it when gaming without a headset.

 

[Cerb]

From your link:

And from the same, or any other like it, there are measurements another). Heatpipes work fine in any orientation, and most rely on capillary action and pressure differences, for which some inches of distance is not going to make much difference, making gravity's effect extremely small, to the point of being negligible most of the time. They are still ridiculously efficient working against gravity.

If that weren't the case, inverted cases, and desktop cases, would be frying video cards and CPUs left and right.

 

[NonInflamitory]

The quietest cards I've ever come across are the HIS "IceQ" series. However, HIS only does Radeon cards.

If you don't need the absolute highest performance card from Nvidia, take a look at the Zotac GeForce GTX 750 Zone -- completely passive, and a very decent card.

 

[Teizo]

Gigabyte, ASUS, or MSI are good choices.

MSI Gaming 970.

This is the MSI Gaming 980 @ 99% load with a high temp of 63C.

I had to cut the volume on my computer all the way up as well as the YT player just to hear the soft noise of the fans.

The Gigabyte one was ok, but no where near as good as the MSI one. Not sure what the reported clocks on each were though, which could make a difference. ASUS' Strix was close to the MSI.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I16TS4MEFWw

 

[NickelPlate]

MSI Gaming 970.

^^This. I have one and I never hear it even during heavy gaming. Even at 99% GPU, the fans spin in the low 40% and the GPU temp runs in the low 60s. It might as well be silent or fanless.

 

[xLegenday]

Sapphire Tri-X 290X is now with amazing pricing and its pretty quiet.

 

[Blue_Max]

The quietest cards I've ever come across are the HIS "IceQ" series. However, HIS only does Radeon cards.

If you don't need the absolute highest performance card from Nvidia, take a look at the Zotac GeForce GTX 750 Zone -- completely passive, and a very decent card.

Agreed on both counts! :thumbsup:

 

[Wall Street]

Are we talking about the sound that the video card makes at load or at idle? There are some cards like the ASUS Strix line which completely spin down the fans at idle and really only have the fans kick in while gaming. If you insist upon whisper quiet performance while gaming, that is another matter and you need to look at water cooling solutions to really do much better than a lot of the stock cards out there. The only other option really is underclocking and undervolting the card, which is a trade-off that you can fool around with but only you can decide if you want to make. My personal experience has been that cards with 2-3 axial fans have both better temperatures and lower noise levels than blowers.

 

[f1sherman]

What's the deal with Water Cooling anyway?
Why wc setup, pump+fans can be near silent, yet classic GPU cooling can't?

 

[Wall Street]

What's the deal with Water Cooling anyway?
Why wc setup, pump+fans can be near silent, yet classic GPU cooling can't?

You need to have a certain amount of air pass over a certain area of heat sink to be able to adequately dissipate a certain amount of heat. You can only make a heat sink so large and still be able to strap it to the chip, therefor, once you reach a size of heatsink where it is impractical to make it any larger and add more fans, the only thing that you can do is make those fans spin faster. Look at the length of some of the triple fan GPUs, they can be over 10" long and still use only 92 mm fans instead of 120 mm fans. Look at the size of the Noctua D14, it can block the 1st PCI-E slot on some motherboards so it is impractical to make it bigger. The weight of these coolers hanging off of the PCB is also a problem. Additionally, on GPUs, the PCB itself restricts the airflow behind the heatsink.

Water coolers are able to use thicker, wider, and heavier radiators with larger fans. By decoupling the radiator from the PCB, some of the weight and space issuers are resolved. As a result of using more fans and larger fans to blow across a higher surface area radiator, each fan can spin slower to achieve the same cooling performance. Fan noise tends to be non-linear with RPM, that means that two fans spinning at 800 RPM make much less noise that one fan at 1600 RPM. The water cooling trade-off is that the pump also makes noise, there is additional cost and the system is more complex which makes it more prone to failure.

Imagine strapping the radiators and fans from an EK X240 to your GPU. Because of the thickness of the radiator and the full sized fan, it would block 5-6 PCI-E slots (ALL of the slots on 90% of boards) and it would probably rip the PCI-E socket off of your motherboard.