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Thinnest cooler for X1900XTX?

M

Mr. Apollo

n00b
Joined
Aug 14, 2005
Messages
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My friend works for ATi so I picked up a X1900XTX for very cheap. The problem is that the cooler occupies my one free PCI slot. I'd like to instgall Belkin's new wireless N card when it's available so I need that PCI slot. The other PCI slot is taken up by a TV tuner and I have a free PCIe 1X slot. I suppose I could always get the PowerColor TV tuner for the PCIe 1X slot but then I would lose the AV inputs on the front of my PC as the PowerColor doesn't have a jack for them.
 
single slot cooler is the thing ur looking for
last time i checked, the only single slot air cooler (other than stock coolers) is the zalman vf-900
im pretty sure its single slot and its pretty damn good :)
 
Can we assume you're wanting air cooling and not a water setup? Single slot waterblocks are fairly common but air coolers are a little harder to find.
 
I say take the money your friend saved you and buy a water cooling setup. :)
 
Yeah, ideally I am looking for an air cooling setup.

I miguht just decide to live with it the way it is and just hope for a USB Wireless N adapter or a PCIe 1X adapter.
 
The_Dark_Abyss said:
The X1900XT just produces way too much heat for a single-slot air cooler.
Click to expand...
I bet it would be OK if you don't overclock. My VF700 cools my X1800XT decently and that's a pretty warm card as well. I'm not really overclocking much though.
 
The vf900 is thin, but I don't think it is thin enough to allow use of the adjacent PCI slot.

I'm willing to bet there will be USB Wireless-N adaptors pretty quickly.
 
Riptide_NVN said:
I bet it would be OK if you don't overclock. My VF700 cools my X1800XT decently and that's a pretty warm card as well. I'm not really overclocking much though.
Click to expand...

The X1900XT produces more heat. Also the VF700 is not a single-slot cooler.
 
The 1900XTX produces an enormous amount of heat, a single card cooler is going to have a real problem dissipating that heat without you getting dangerously high GPU temps. Keep a carefull eye on your GPU temps if you go that route. I water cooled mine with a Swiftech MCW6000 block. You still need to get some decent airflow over the card with water cooling because the onboard voltage regulators get VERY hot, also the memory produces a significant amount of heat when running under load and when it gets hot it noticeably cuts down on your memory overclocking potential, so you need ramsinks and some airflow.
The other option is get a single slot cooler like the zalman, and just use ATI tool to reduce the GPU core voltage a bit and maybe underclock the card to reduced the heat it produces. I'll bet you could substantially reduce the heat generated if you just reduce the core voltage to just above the point where it won't run at stock speeds. Power dissipation goes up very rapidly with increasing Vcore.
 
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