Thermalright Shaman + 6970... anyone try it yet?

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jubrany

Limp Gawd
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Jul 21, 2005
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I'm holding out on buying a VGA card until there is a quiet, reliable way to cool it. I see that the Shaman indeed supports the 6970 according to the Thermalright website. The Shaman seems like the king of quiet VGA cooling, especially when paired with a VRM cooler. The problem is there is no VRM cooler yet for the new cards. According to one review, the gtx580+Shaman at low fan speed was not good at cooling the VRMs and recommended to wait for a separate Thermalright VRM cooler (despite TR's claims that it is unnecessary since the 580 VRMs run cooler than the last generation).

So, with that said, do you think it is wise to try to run a Shaman on the 6970 with the pitiful stick-on VRM sinks? My setup will be a Lian-Li X900 with seven120mm Sflex E fans set to ~800rpm everywhere (3x intake, 2x exhaust, 1 on the HR02 cpu cooler and 1 on the VGA cooler).
 
if im not mistaken the mounting for the gpu is identical to the 3k/4k/5k series, the changes are the VRM and ram locations which limits you on full plate covers for the ram/vrm. as far as the stick on heatsinks, if you have decent cooling in your case it shouldn't be to big of an issue until some full cover's come out.
 
I ran a GTX280 with an HR-03 and used little Enzotech Mos c1 and they worked surprisingly well. When I moved over to a D-tek uni-sink I didn't notice that much of a difference. The one difference that I did notice when I moved to the uni-sink is that I gained a little overhead when overclocking the memory and GDDR3 runs cooler than GDDR5. I would consider picking up some enzo-tech sinks fot the ram too.
 
I contacted Thermalright regarding the matter and they were kind enough to reply with an actual reply, and not just a "thanks for your inquiry" type response.

Thermalright is in the process of making a VRM for these cards as we speak and are looking to have them ready for February. Hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on one in a couple months, and I'll pair it with the Shaman and an S-Flex E :)
 
I just hope to find one of these at a reasonable cost at some point soon. The only places where I can find them are Frozen CPU and Amazon and the cheaper of the two is still $75 which is a lot more than I paid for my HR-03 GTX and True. I'll be using some enzotech sinks anyways since I've found Thermalright's memory and vrm sinks to be sub-par.
 
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The Thermalright VRM R5 for the 5870 is about $34. Thermalright has always been too expensive. We need another company to make a decent screw-on vrm cooler. I'm waiting for anybody to make one at this point.

Or, if I can find a stock cooler somewhere to cannibalize, that might work too.
 
Yeah but even if I need to spend 120 dollars on aftermarket cooling on a 300 dollar VGA card, I will do it because I insist on having a machine that is as quiet as possible with sacrificing as little performance as possible.

Hardly anyone is willing to buy these products, they are for enthusiasts, and until more people buy these products they will have to charge high prices to justify making them in the first place.
 
I'm still waiting for the day they make a useful crossfire-compatible high-end VGA cooler. So far the only company that's made one is Arctic, and Arctic coolers are terribad.
 
samuelmorris said:
I'm still waiting for the day they make a useful crossfire-compatible high-end VGA cooler. So far the only company that's made one is Arctic, and Arctic coolers are terribad.
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As long as you are using something like a Corsair H50 you could do crossfire or sli with a spitfire. I've also heard nothing but good things about the accelero. You may have to get creative with vrm and memory cooling with either solution.
 
Only got three lower slots to play with unfortunately, before the PSU gets in the way., due to correct slot spacing on the motherboard. I don't relish the prospect of 150C+ VRMs either.

Acceleros are out due to enormous % destruction rate.
 
samuelmorris said:
Only got three lower slots to play with unfortunately, before the PSU gets in the way., due to correct slot spacing on the motherboard. I don't relish the prospect of 150C+ VRMs either.

Acceleros are out due to enormous % destruction rate.
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Like I said those little enzotech mos-c1 sinks are more than fine for a GTX280 and the vrms on that card ran hot. I didn't even notice an improvement with a uni-sink. They are also really easy to use with any of these large thermalright sinks and I'm sure that with some thermal adhesive instead of thermal tape that the vrm temps would have rivaled the stock cooler.

Unless you are talking about 4870x2 I don't know about this destruction rate that you are talking about and that was because the screws were too short or something. That is an entirely different cooler. I've heard nothing but good things about that cooler.
 
The 4870X2 one was terribad, the 5970 one was worse. The only one I've personally used was the S1, and that too destroyed a card. They're just too high a risk.
 
samuelmorris said:
The 4870X2 one was terribad, the 5970 one was worse. The only one I've personally used was the S1, and that too destroyed a card. They're just too high a risk.
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The 4870x2 version was fixed. Either way those are dual gpu coolers and an entirely different ballgame. An S1 is just four screws and the installation process is no different than any other singe gpu cooler and shouldn't be any higher of a risk than installing a shaman.
 
The 5970 version was not fixed, and was worse. Easy to see from a quick google.
The flaw with the S1 is it requires an enormous amount of force to clip down, force that's applied to the GPU itself. Poor design. Perhaps the newer single-GPU coolers are better, but with one cooler you know has killed one of your cards, and two more that you know destroy other people's, would you trust them?
 
I installed the Shaman last night - HUGE improvement overall already! The loudest thing in my case now is a set of Nexus 120mm "Real Silent" fans to give you a reference.

I'm running ~29C idle and ~45C under load after an hour of Battlefield BC2.

This being compared to the 80-90C I was easily hitting before on the stock cooler under load with auto fan settings. Way too hot for me and the fan was obnoxiously loud, so I grabbed the biggest and quietest thing I could find!

This is on a XFX 6950 flashed to 6970 firmware running 20% power boost.

Very satisfied!
 
Stryker, what did you use to cool the VRMs? The included kit with the Shamen? Did the mosfet sinks have any trouble sticking? That seems to be a common complaint among thermalright GPU heatsinks...terrible thermal tape.
 
Bad ConNecTioN said:
Stryker, what did you use to cool the VRMs? The included kit with the Shamen? Did the mosfet sinks have any trouble sticking? That seems to be a common complaint among thermalright GPU heatsinks...terrible thermal tape.
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The mosfet sinks fit fine for me, I just cleaned each one thoroughly with Isopropyl alcohol and stuck it on after they dried. I'll take it out in a few days to see if they're still there.. but looks good so far!

I did not buy the Thermalright VRM cooler in addition though.
 
I believe it's a motherboard fan connector, I don't think you stick it into the graphics card's fanslot. of course this does mean you can't dynamically adjust the speed with stuff like Catalyst and Afterburner.
It being in your motherboard does still allow you to monitor and adjust the speed, just not with the same software.
 
mastervampire said:
Guys I have a problem with my Shaman and 6950

I installed it into the card fine but the Shaman fan which has that little white 4 pin wont fit into the 6950 4 pin fan cable slot.

Has anyone else come accross this problem? Strykar?

I want to be able to monitor the fan rpm etc... but cant because of this!

You can see what I mean by these 2 pics:
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/8563/dscn6097d.jpg
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/7307/6950barecopy.jpg

Thanks
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jubrany said:
Thermalright is in the process of making a VRM for these cards as we speak and are looking to have them ready for February.
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Funny... I received the opposite.

Thanks for your mail and sorry for the late reply.
For now, we have no plan for new dedicated VRM solutions.
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That's just stupid. Their loss I guess.
 
Raudulfr said:
Funny... I received the opposite.



That's just stupid. Their loss I guess.
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:( This is what I got... albeit a long time ago. I feel hesitant to run the Shaman without a proper heatpipe VRM cooler because I will have to rely on plentiful case airflow instead of being able to shoot for silence. Although I do have 3 120mm intake fans, one of them only an 1 1/2" away from the edge of my 6950 (x900b case).

 
This is what I got (March 2nd)

sshot20110308014237.png
 
Sadly I got a similar email today.

Dear Edit,

Thanks for your mail and sorry for the late reply.
We don’t plan to release any new dedicated VRM solution so far, the HD6900 series and the GTX500 series are not supported.
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I'm just going to use some thermal epoxy to stick some enzotech sinks on my vrms. I'm hoping that if I mix Arctic Alumina epoxy with some MX-2 that it won't be permanent and will still hold well.
 
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