HD7970 affordable air cooler recommendations?

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Ticker305

[H]ard|Gawd
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Got in on the Diamond reference deal, cards on the way and I'm already getting a headache just thinking about the reference leaf blower sound its going to make under heavy load when OC and the Ghz updated bios. Right now my system and gpu with a zalman aftermarket cooler is whisper quiet and I'm afraid I've been spoiled to the point of no return.

Would love to water cool but not in the budget at the moment, are there any affordable air solutions that will give me a decent OC and won't scare the cat, hopefully in the $50-60 range?
 
Unfortunately, I don't there's any real quiet solutions cheap and you're correct the reference cooler is going to be loud under load. This is one of the reasons why I got rid of my Sapphire 7950 and it had a Dual-X cooler on it and it was still way too loud for me.
 
Don't use the GHz BIOS and you won't have a problem. You can get pretty decent clocks out of most 7970's with reference voltage, and you'll be fine leaving the fan on the default/auto profile.
 
I'm running reference MSI 7970's in crossfire - you don't need a special bios to get awesome clocks. I was hitting 1200Mhz out of the box on both cards with just a .05V bump.

Yes - the cards can sound like jet engines if you run them up to 70/80/90% fan speed in a custom profile.

The default profile is pretty good - as long as the clocks are stable, you can run the card at 80C + all day long and never have an issue.

My last setup - i had aftermarket coolers on my 69XX cards, and the amount of case heat was insane. So I'm a huge fan of reference coolers -- getting the heat off the GPU and out of the case is the number one priority.

Personally I can't wait for winter to get here -- I'm in North Texas and it's October and still hitting 85-95F degrees during the day!
 
It sucks that the 7900 have that raised metal guard on the side of the die, if it didn't you could get a heatsink like the S1 Plus and strap a fan to it. Unfortunately that won't work for your GPU.

I think Accelero 7970 or Twin Turbo would both be good options. Just make sure whatever you get has a raised section to contact the core.
 
I haven't taken my reference 7970's apart yet but if you had a dremel and were feeling ballsy you could always carve out the space you need on the underside of the heatsink itself to allow whatever little metal guard to clear and allow flush contact.

this is just me thinking outloud without actually having seen the die itself.
 
Undervolt and Overclock (yes, most will) the card and then see if it is still too loud.
 
You can get a Accelero 7970 with your budget. I have 1 on my HD7970 and it is excellent. The main complaint about that cooler is the high vrm temperature. However I found that it is most likely due to people connecting the cooler to the card directly and without modifying the fan profile.
 
I don't see the problem with the reference cooler. the ghz bios throws over 1.2v at the card at 1050/1500... my reference non ghz card does those clocks at 1.1v and with fan at 35% I max out between 65-70c.
 
Even 35% is pretty loud for people used to aftermarket coolers that are practically silent.
 
That's retarded... are these people playing video games muted with their ear next to the graphics card?
 
I like my really silent pc too, but I can't hear a 7970 at 35% on a reference cooler when I am actually playing a game. People that bitch about that are RETARDED sorry/
 
Accelero 7970 is awesome. 65c max gaming, 100% fan speed for VRM cooling and near silent (Not able to hear) gaming.
 
I'm actually impressed so far with the ref cooler, not nearly as loud as I thought it would be. Turned it up to 80% manually in catalyst for shits n giggles, sounds literally like a blow dryer. But even with a pretty decent stock voltage oc (signature), the fan hasn't even broken 39% on the stock fan profile yet during long gaming sessions and has been barley indiscernible over the rest of my system fans.
 
Ticker305 said:
Got in on the Diamond reference deal, cards on the way and I'm already getting a headache just thinking about the reference leaf blower sound its going to make under heavy load when OC and the Ghz updated bios. Right now my system and gpu with a zalman aftermarket cooler is whisper quiet and I'm afraid I've been spoiled to the point of no return.

Would love to water cool but not in the budget at the moment, are there any affordable air solutions that will give me a decent OC and won't scare the cat, hopefully in the $50-60 range?
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take the shroud off and look at the heatsink. If it has open fins, then strap a couple of 80mm case fans to the top of it. You will notice significant improvements VS. just the stupid blower style fan.

Some of these shrouded exhaust fan setups come with heatsinks that have closed "tunnel" like fins. I guess to further contain the air flow. If the heatsink is that style, then putting fans on top of it probably won't work well, because the air will be blocked from touching most of the fins' surface area.
 
Random suggestion - get a headset? I've set up my 7970's to run at 80% fan speed under load, can't hear it over the sound from my G35's. Of course it annoys the hell out of whoever else is in the room...
 
Rattle said:
I like my really silent pc too, but I can't hear a 7970 at 35% on a reference cooler when I am actually playing a game. People that bitch about that are RETARDED sorry/
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Not everyone plays nothing but mind numbing action games with headphones. :rolleyes:
 
I love how people want top performance then bitch and cry about a little fan noise, go water then and have silence.
 
Jinto said:
You can get a Accelero 7970 with your budget. I have 1 on my HD7970 and it is excellent. The main complaint about that cooler is the high vrm temperature. However I found that it is most likely due to people connecting the cooler to the card directly and without modifying the fan profile.
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great point re the fan profile...

I'm using an Arctic Cooling Hybrid which is MUCH quieter than the ASUS DCuII cooler even when that cooler was running fans at 10%

at 10%, the fan on the hybrid doesn't even spin up - so i have the fan setting at 50% for the little 80 cm fan that's on the shroud to cool the VRM yet cannot hear it

the ONLY thing now that I will do is undervolt the pump ever-so-slightly to reduce it's noise so my PC will be pretty much silent
 
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Rattle said:
I love how people want top performance then bitch and cry about a little fan noise, go water then and have silence.
Click to expand...

Thats what the thread is about. Trying to get the most performance that you can without the noise. :rolleyes:

What I don't understand it people who bitch and cry because not every has the same opinion that they do.
 
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