Best cooling solution for 6800 Ultra

B

bmxbomb43

n00b
Joined
Nov 11, 2004
Messages
57
What is the best cooling you can buy for the 6800 ultra that is non-water? thanks
 
something u already have... but there is a copper heansink for it somewhere.. i forgot but someone will knoe.. from ecga? wait no.. IDK but it's reddish orange.. o yeha and the stock heatsink/fan isn't all hat good because it cools the memory and core under one house.. which makes overclocking not to its full ability under air...
 
but then u would have to *cut* off the second pci slot cover and the nvsiliencer is only 1-3celsius better than the stock cooling so don't bother...
 
anyone uses one of those? how much drop did u get from the stock cooling?
 
aZn_plyR said:
anyone uses one of those? how much drop did u get from the stock cooling?
Click to expand...

I got one of these and I noticed a 5c temp drop on a PNY 6800 Ultra I was trying out and while it worked, but returned it cause it was bad outta the box would crash all the time even with the copper heatsink and at stock 400 / 1100 speed, don't buy PNY!!!.


:mad: :mad:
 
o well mines is just fine at stock speeds.. but mines came with 425/1.1 though.. i guess u bought the early revision.. it came with a bundle right? (games)
 
You got lucky I guess, mine was just the card and no game bundle at all, in a plain white box.
 
aZn_plyR said:
but then u would have to *cut* off the second pci slot cover and the nvsiliencer is only 1-3celsius better than the stock cooling so don't bother...
Click to expand...

If I'm not mistaken, AC Silncer 5 is considered to be the best air cooler for 6800xx gpus. Also, it moves hot (HOTT) air produced by the GPU directly out of the case, which improves cpu/chipset overclockability.
 
it is the best... for the gt's... it is better than the 6800ultra's stock.. but is it worth it to gain 1-3 celsius lower AND to cut off part of the dual pci slot on the ultra for so little gain? the answer is no unless u got money to waste and lots of time on ur hands.. if it was a gt.. then it would 100% be worth it if ur overclocking
 
thanks alot for all the info guys. I always trust [H]ard forums to answer these questions. I am going to go with the artic S5. I am getting my ultra from dell so does nayone know if they come with stock fans on them? I think it might be a waterblock version.....
 
bmxbomb43 said:
thanks alot for all the info guys. I always trust [H]ard forums to answer these questions. I am going to go with the artic S5. I am getting my ultra from dell so does nayone know if they come with stock fans on them? I think it might be a waterblock version.....
Click to expand...
when does dell sell water cooled units??
 
BFG sold by Dell has stock hsf on it, see the thread in deals section. BTW, NV5 is notorious for poor fit on 6800s so I won't call "the best", prolly the most "troublemaking", and it's definitely won't offer any benefits over reference ultra HSF. It's main benefits are quietness and removing heat from the case but otherwise it's no better than even GT reference hsf.
 
if the NV5 isnt good what should I do? I am definently going to try to overlcock it more then it is already. Do you have any better ideas?
 
wow! Dell shipped my order sunday at 5pm and it will be here before thursday. I order on saturday night and they said it would ship in January. I geuss I got lucky.
Replaying to last 2 posts. I am not going to do water. I was trying to find out the best air solution. Thanks though
 
aZn_plyR said:
it is the best... for the gt's... it is better than the 6800ultra's stock.. but is it worth it to gain 1-3 celsius lower AND to cut off part of the dual pci slot on the ultra for so little gain? the answer is no unless u got money to waste and lots of time on ur hands.. if it was a gt.. then it would 100% be worth it if ur overclocking
Click to expand...
What is this "cutting off" you're talking about?
 
u knoe how the 6800 ultra's uses two pci slots instead of one like the gt? well if u install the nvsiliencer u would have to cut of the second pci slot on the ultra..
 
Ohh... I see. Doesn't he have a 6800U in the first place, though? :confused: In that case, it's dual-slot either way.
 
Gather round and I'll tell you a tale...

I was one of those lucky handful of people who managed to get a 6800u back in July, it was (is) a gainward 6015 (430/1200 out of the box).
Anyway, it was pretty loud compared to it's predecessor so I decided to get one of the NV5 coolers...which promptly didn't fit, because of the well documented ramsink problem.

Not one to give up without a fight, I sanded the ramsinks down until it sat happily and all was well.

Until I noticed the noise start to increase again, I thought it was my CPU fan resonating or something, then one day it sort of screamed.
I shut down my PC popping off the side quickly I observed that the fan on the NV5 cooler wasn't turning, after removing it I found that the fan was totally siezed.

So I put back in the stock cooler, much to my suprise it, while as loud as ever, was running easily 10degrees cooler than it had been originally.

The cooler itself isn't one of those big dual fan dealies that's in all the pictures (which initially caused me some concern), it looks like the reference Nvidia cooler, and that's what I thought it was until I saw the high performance evga (or whatever) cooler, my cooler is one of those, basically the reference cooler, only in copper instead of aluminium.

Morals of the story:

1:Re-seating the stock cooler with AS5 can work wonders.
2:Be careful of after market coolers on really expensive kit.

Anyway, for those still reading, Zalmans new vga cooler for the 6800series should be out in the next week or so, and it looks like it might be really good, the design is quite a departure for their VGA line, it looks more like their cpu "Flower" coolers except that it's not symmetrical, the fins are shorter on the socket side and its much thinner (it looks like a dual-slot solution). Whether or not it'll beat the competition for pure cooling I don't know, but it'll probably do it quietly.

Oh, I should also say that the copper version of the reference cooler, as sold by evga and fitted to some gainward cards does cool better than my NV5 did (...when the fan was pushing hot air out the back) by a few degrees, after an hour of rthdribl at 430 the stock/copper cooler still gets lower temps (by a couple of degrees) than the NV5 did at 400.
 
Hmmm - that's good info. I have an NV5 waiting for some sort of bodge fitting to my BFG Ultra, but I'm having second thoughts about it now. I also have a tube of AS5 to use with it. If you got such good results simply by changing the paste I may just try that. A quick questions though:

What ambient/load temps did you get before and after changing the paste? I get about 35C/50C at idle and a core temp of 75C on load which seems a touch high for 2-slot cooling when GTs seem to be getting only about 78C at Ultra clocks.

The NV5 is advertised as being compatible with the 6800Ultra, which it blatantly isn't. I may use this as an excuse to get my money back given the number of reports I hear that the fan does little and you have to vandalise your card to fit it.
 
those gt's at ultra clocks with 78c are with nvsiliencer's.... without it.. u would expect 80's and for some 90's...
 
Aye, looks like you're right. A quick look through the old 'post your GT overclocks' thread gave a wide spread ranging from 74C to 97C under load on stock cooling. Most people saying in the low 80s. I guess a lot of it's down to what else is in your case.
 
With the stock cooler as fitted from the factory, it was getting about 53degrees at idle and 82degrees or so under load (at 43/1200), the NV5 actually got about the same, but it was much quieter (not as quite as I had hoped though), though it's possible that the mating surface wasn't optimal, and the fan may never have been working properly.

When I put back on the stock cooler the temps dropped back to 49/50 idle and low 70's under load.

I should say that my way of judging load is to run rthdribl at default settings for an hour, which may not be the best way of generating load.

What I can say for certain is that my NV5 didn't fit out of the box, and then died within weeks.
And that using exactly the same test conditions, the load temps for the stock cooler dropped by approximatly 10degrees just by reseating it with new thermal paste (AS5).
I'm inclined to believe that the reseating accounted for most of the temp drop rather than the paste though.

As an aside, as I type this I 've had rthdribl running for about 25mins (430/1200) and the temp hasn't broken 70C yet.

I should also point out for the benefit of the international audience that December nights in Ireland aren't known for their high ambient temperatures.
 
Lol - there are similarly GPU-friendly ambient conditions in Harlow at the moment. Nice one - I might just swap the paste and retain the stock fan hearing this. My high temps were judged similarly to yours, but with only 20 mins of rth dribble.

On a related note - has anyone had good results with a PCI plug-in fan to blow extra air over the graphics card? Or is it all just stirring the same air around, but with added noise?
 
OMFG! That Zalman Looks B@D@SS! If it cools anything like their CNPS-7XXX series I would say I think we have a winner!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top