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Cooling my GPU

cobramonkey

cobramonkey

2[H]4U
Joined
Apr 16, 2007
Messages
2,595
I have an Nvidia 9800 gt 512 mb, and it has recently started being very loud. I'm guessing that it is more likely that my fan has decided to start being loud, and not that my card is running hotter than normally. What solutions can I be looking at doing to resolve the loud noise?
 
Make sure there is no dust in the heatsink fins, and you can remove and replace the thermal paste with something better, that will only help if the card is running hot though and its not just a noisy fan. Next step is an aftermarket air cooler, which would take care of higher temps, and also replace the fan, with something much quiter than the reference fan.
 
Is it a straight up nvidia branded card with the one fan sucker type cooler?
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If you've got the room and some airflow in your case, the Accelero S1 Rev2 is a great passive cooler. Here's what I did with my 9800GT.
 
a duorb will work very good on that card as well.. its what i used on my 8800GT w/ volt modded bios running 760/1836/1050(gaming) 760/1890/1050(F@H).. the 9800GT should overclock just as good with that cooler since it already runs a higher voltage then the 8800GT.. the duorb is like a 2mm larger then the dual slot cooler vs the accelero which will easily take 3 slots with fans attached to it..

my card ran 35C idle 55C full load under F@H around 48-50C in games..
 
InvisiBill said:
If you've got the room and some airflow in your case, the Accelero S1 Rev2 is a great passive cooler. Here's what I did with my 9800GT.
Click to expand...

Hey, awesome! I actually have been wanting to do something like that, except with the fixed-speed kaze-jyu (SY1012SL12M) from scythe. Your solution is quite a bit more elegant, however, what with the pwm controlled fan. It's nice to see that the fan and heatsink are a good pair, aesthetically and functionally. I wonder if it could fit 2 100x100mm fans side-by-side?

Anyway, I'm using the zalman vf-1000. It's nice. Apparently not as good as the accelero s1 with a fan, but it is very quiet and efficient, and doesn't take as many slots as the s1/fan setup.

If you're looking for a quick and cheap solution to your noise problem, try taking off the stock heatsink and taking it apart. There might be a whole bunch of dust clogged somewhere. Clean all that dust out, clean the gpu core and heatsink thoroughly (with isopropyl alcohol), apply some thermal paste like arctic silver 5 to the core, and reseat the heatsink. If you see 8 or so spongy greasy pads on the bottom of the heatsink, just leave them there, or replace them with some thermal pads from ebay if you accidentally damage or tear some. Make sure to get the thick kind of thermal pad (1 or 2mm should be sufficient)

Also, check your temperatures against the max temperature for your card. You don't want to go over about 100 degrees Celsius with the 9800GT, and you should probably be getting somewhere around 50-70, depending on the manufacturer of your card.

Perhaps install Nvidia's nTune or "performance tools", which will allow you to control the fan's speed through software--just ensure that your temperatures remain in a safe range if you decide to control your fan speed manually. I found that this helped very much to reduce noise before I got my vf-1000 heat sink.
 
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