WANTED: Quiet graphics card or one with removable heat sink/fan

[moschops]

I've put together my dream quiet system: QuietPC PSU, Zalman CU-AL cooler and Maxtor 7200rpm hard drive with fluid dynamic bearing. Everything is around 30db or less and without video its super quiet...

However the graphics card is much noiser than everything else. Its an old VisionTek GeFore3 AGP/64M-DDR.

Worse still I've heard that most GeForce4 cards are considerably noisier :-(

So I'm wondering if there are any quiet but still good performance video cards out there, or ones where I can remove or upgrade the cooling with something from QuietPC or Zalman.

If not I'm wondering a solution is having a double headed system with a regular uncooled PCI or mobo video system PLUS a kickass AGP card. Then I need to find a way to power down the AGP card, or at least disable its cooling system when I'm not using it. If I'm not using it it wont burn a lot of heat will it? Do any desktop cards support this kind of concept of low power or software disabling? I know this is something most mobile GPUs have, but I haven't see it for desktop boards...

 

[cockeyed]

I also have a VisionTek GF3 and it was loud with the original fan. I solved this by popping off the old fan (pry it off of the heatsink corners) and replacing it with a P3 cooling fan. I connected the new fan to a case connector, running it at +7volts, reducing the RPM. It is now virtually silent and cools the GF3 just fine. The fan can be connected to the heatsink with silicone adhesive or screws. You can find info on doing the +7 v trick on the web and also in the AT forums, if you don't know how to do this.

 

[Athlex]

Since you've already gone the Zalman route, you might also consider using a Zalman heatsink on your video card. This one (link) would require a side-mounted case fan (or their own bracket) but having a large, low-RPM fan would certainly help the sound situation. Not sure on where to buy these, but Zalman quotes prices in USD, so I assume you can buy them directly.

Edit: I've also read that Tennmax's Lasagna coolers are quieter and more effective than most stock HSFs. Might also be worth a look.

 

[oldfart]

Yes, that nV reference fan used on the VT GF3 was very loud. I replaced mine with a Crystal ORB, then did a 7 volt mod and removed the "TT" lid. It was very quiet and cooled just fine. If you do that mod, I think you will be happy with it. The VT GF4 Ti4600 is very quiet right out of the box. Very happy about that. If you look around, there are also OEM GF3 Ti200 cards that come with a big Passive HS and no fan

 

[Peter]

Best fanless graphics cards out there are PowerColor Radeon 7500LE series. There's a full height RV2L, a low profile RV2LE, and a PCI RV2P. All three are dual head cards, CRT+DVI+TV, 64 MBytes of RAM (128-bit SDRAM for the L and 64-bit DDR for the LE and P). Performance is mediocre of course, a direct consequence of the low power consumption.

regards, Peter

 

[tantalus0]

The Abit Siluro geforce 4 ti 4400 is supposed to be the quietest of the gf 4's at around 30dB. Might be the perfect fit for your system.

 

[moschops]

Thanks for all the excellent advice - maybe its time graphics card manufacturers started publishing acoustic info in their specs like hard drive makers do. I'll probably eventually go with the VisionTek Ti4600 upgrade (ouch). But I think I'll wait a month or so which will give me time to do a low noise mod on my GF3 card.

 

[Athlex]

Can anyone comment on the quietness/noisiness of the fans found on ATI cards?

 

[Peter]

Since even the top ATi models have half the power consumption of the average GeForce 4, they need half as much cooling as well. I wouldn't expect to see a noisy high rpm fan on an ATi card (and to date, I didn't).

regards, Peter

 

[tenoc]

My 32mb DDR Radeon LE was whisper quiet!

I don't notice any noise from my R8500 either, over my Volcano 6Cu.

without video its super quiet...

Super useless too!

 

[moschops]

So isn't it about time graphics card manufacturers started publishing acoustic data for their boards?

 

[skriefal]

My 32mb DDR Radeon LE was whisper quiet!

Not too surprising, since most -- if not all -- of the LEs didn't have fans. But what about the Radeon 7500s? Are those reasonably quiet? Note that I consider 25dBA or so to be the upper limit of "quiet". Less than 25dBA is certainly preferable...

 

[Peter]

There are fanless 7500LE cards too. that's 7500 with a lower clock and a slower RAM setup. PowerColor RV2L, RV2LE for example. Both are dual head cards w/ TV out, the L is full height, 128-bit SDRAM, while the LE is low profile w/ 64-bit DDR.

regards, Peter

 

[Skalman]

Replace the heatsink/fan with a Zalman ZM17CU heatsink. I use this heatsink on my GF3 without a fan and it works great.

 

[moschops]

Dude I'm glad you mentioned the 7V mod because at 12V, its intended operating voltage that ORB has the noisiest 27db I ever heard. My Zalman 5500 CPU cooler that's supposed to be 34db max is much quieter at its max voltage than the ORB even after I did the 7V mod on the ORB.

However thankfully with the case closed I can hardly hear the CPU cooler now and I'm no longer thinking of droping $350 on a GeForce 4 Ti4600 card (what was I thinking???). I'll wait for the next generation of games to tax my GPU before that happens, by which time maybe we'll be looking at AGP8X, DDR-II, Serial ATA and 1Ghz FSB P4s...

Thanks again for the advice.