My 4850 was not happy running fanless using an S1, I was playing a game (Company of Heroes), the screen went black, but the PC was still working fine, the voiceover was still talking me through the tutorial.

I grabbed one of the many 120mm fans I have lying around and rested it on a bundle of wires roughly pointing towards the S1, the fins were literally half the temp inside 30 seconds. The graphics output didnt happen until a re-boot, which was peaceful as I just hit the power button and the PC shut down in the normal fashion. A couple more hours playing CoH (with the fan) and everything is fine - I have no idea what the actual temp(s) were, but the fins felr in the region of 60+C.

BTW, I thought I better mention it just incase anyone thought otherwise, the heatsink base is made of aluminium, not copper, it is just "copper coloured", so I expect the fins are also aluminium as it would be pretty pointless making them of copper when the poorer conducting aluminium is in its path - also it is an identical colour to the rest or the metal parts of the fan assembly.

This does go someway in telling us why the card gets so toasty when in idle mode, that and running at 500MHz.


Andy

I'm going to try to jury-rig a fan on the inner end of my P180's upper hard-drive chamber, P182-style, and hopefully that'll do it.

What kind of extra heatsinks did you stick on the voltage regulating stuff, andyb?

George

That will do it just fine even @ 5v, you really wont need much airflow at all.



I used the part that comes with the graphics card, thats how I found out that the cooler is aluminium not copper, I hack sawed a part off. There are 2 screws either side of the voltage regulators and mosfets, I cut of just past the next screw up as well so it would make better contact as it would be flatter using 3 screws. It didnt feel quite as hot as the fins on the S1 when it all went pear-shaped with no (direct) airflow at all - so I suspect it will be really happy with a tiny amount of airflow.

I will re-test my system with no fan to see if it crashes again, whilst keeping an eye on the temps. Nick's setup has 2 fans extracting air, mine only has one, so naturally Nick's setup has more airflow. It will be interesting to see what temp my card runs at compared to Nicks with both running passively.


Andy

UPDATE:

Today I looted an 80mm ADDA Sleeve Bearing Fan from a dead PSU, and hung it from the heatpipes near the back of the case (VGA output end) blowing inwards - not extracting at about a 45 degree angle. I already had 4 open slots there, so it is getting cool fresh air and blowing it along the fins, I rigged the fan to run @ 5v at work, and tested its startup ability - it was fine. It seems rather quiet at 12v, and quieter and smooth at 5v - this is not easy to tell as my work place is far from quiet, and it is currently too noisy at home to tell how quiet this really is......

Anyway, the interesting part is to see just how much (little) airflow the 4850 needs with an S1 to keep cool. Having had the PC on for 20 minutes with the graphics card doing nothing but displaying the SPCR webpage whilst runing at its default idle clocks of 500/933 the temp has risen 1C to a lowly 39C.

I am going to run ATITool to see via the graph the highest temp the card reaches whilst playing Company Of Heroes with everything maxxed out @ 1920x1200x32bit.

EDIT: ATI Tool does not want to run, it just eats half of my clock cycles and thats it, I will just have to flick over quickly to the CCC to see the numbers. After installing ATI Tool and it not working I rebooted, and re-tried it - by this time the GPU had hit 40C.

I will post back later with my findings, but I suspect that a single 80mm fan @ 5v on the S1 will keep the temps well within limits at minimal/no noise level. This I hope will prove/disprove that the 4850 can be cooled passively with the S1 given enough overall case airflow and the right airpath (Nick's) or a lower airflow system (Mine) cooled with very few direct CFM. We can then extrapolate the kind of airflow needed for people using the 4870 with the S1 cooler.

After about an hour, the core temp is 53C The simple answer is that you wont need a lot of airflow to keep the 4850 cool with an S1. According to SPCR's re-tested (with more accurate results in purple) fans my fan @ 5v will output about 5-6 CFM. In a way it hardly seems worth the effort as the airflow is so small, but the results speak for themselves you really dont need a lot at all.

My results land inbetween Hardware Canucks results with the S1 running fanless and with the S1 with the turbo module installed.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/ha ... ew-24.html


Andy

My thoughts on the 4850:

They need to fix the idle power issue. Something is terribly wrong, because even running the card at 160/500 (used the MSI bios update) only dropped my idle temps by a few degrees. No card should have to use so much power at idle.

That said, the default fan profile for the 4850 does seem to anticipate this high idle power consumption. At 70C idle, using an unaltered fan profile, the fan is almost silent. In my system the card typically peaks at 80C load, which doesn't bother me too much. I've decided to keep the stock cooler, but I would appreciate it much if ATI could reduce consumption further via a driver update.

To get these lower temps, I've used a 1200RPM S-FLEX (running at 1000 RPM) on the front input of my Sonata, giving the card plenty of fresh air.

This card is an affront to nature as far as I'm concerned. I bought one, but am regretting it... all of the usual reasons -- idle power consumption, heat, noise, etc.

I didn't do enough research before I pulled the trigger. I recall reading that the 48xx series would have "EXTREMELY LOW" idle power consumption. PowerPlay is not working, the drivers aren't up to date, etc, etc is not a valid excuse. This thing idles at 80c and doesn't get any hotter under load with only a minor increase in fan speed? That's ridiculous.

The reason I bought it was because I assumed it was the ideal mix of low idle power consumption and excellent gaming performance. Guess I'll get a HD3450 and just swap in the 4850 when I want to game.

@ Moogles.

There is no point getting another card that uses less power when idle, as I guess you got the 4850 for its performance first and foremost, it is easy to keep it cool, and even after a considerable time of usage your power bill is not going to see that huge a difference to warrant the lack of enjoyment from gaming at lower speed/quality, and likewise the cost of selling the card to replace it with something else is going to account for the next 12 months worth of electricity costs.

I would certainly give it a couple of months to see what if anything is going to happen with the idle power consumption.


Andy

I have a Sapphire HD 4870, the easiest way i've found to see the max temp is to use HWmonitor.

http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

Useful stuff from "mkk".

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... 139#422139


Andy

ah ati and crappy/non existant drivers.

Now i remember why i only buy nvidia

i'll wait to see Nvidia's midrange reply to this card before i make up my mind though.

I used to be a nVidia bogot as well, but one day I just couldnt resist looking at how the other half live, I then bought my first ATI card for 5 years, 3 cards later, and I am still looking forward to buying a nVidia card. I was very close to buying an 8800GT, then the 38xx came out - I dont care what "brand" I buy so long as it does what I want at the price point I want to pay.

Also, I have had no more (or less) problems with my ATI cards than nVidia's. And I have actually had less problems with ATI chipsets with integrated graphics compared to nVidia's offerings.

This is not to say that I am a fan of either camp, I wil buy whatever offers the best of everything at the right price tag. This means that I have not bought a single nVidia chipset for the PC's I build and sell at work for 9-months, and I am now reccomending people to buy the HD3850 where I was reccomending people to buy the 8800GT if they want to play games.

If nVidia had brought out something that was faster at the same price point as the 4850 I would have bought it.......... They didnt - but they are still talking about it.


Andy

..........Year 2000 has past and were have you been and Nvidia's midrange reply is 9800GTX+ for $250.00 vs the Radeon HD4850 at $190.00. With an awsome lead of 5 fps for your $60.00 more. They shipped out the 9800GTX+ stickers few weeks ago to card makers enjoy. Give ATI credit where it due, Nvidia's dropped the ball with this generation.

You meant 48xx and 4850, right?

OK, I admit I did a brain fart, I am tired, where ~I said 38xx I really meant 48xx.

And yes I did really mean the 8800GT and not the 9800GT(9800GTX whatever it is called) simply because the item with the 9 in its name is significantly more expensive than the 8800GT.

For a price point of ~£100+ VAT, the 8800GT was there for a long time, and was a great card, but not the 4850 is there and the 8800GT is £90+VAT the 4850 is the card to buy, especially when the nVidia 9800whatever is £170+VAT. Simply put it makes sense to buy the 4850 for that kind of money, the gates are wide open for higher price brackets, but most people I know are not that interested is spending more.


Andy

I didn't question that

Silly question...

If you mount a 1200rpm fan on an S1, should it blow air onto the card or pull air off of it?

Thanks!

Blow onto it. IMO the other way it would be less effective cooling the VRM and memory, and would probably work against the case airflow.