Thermaltake Geforce 4 TI VGA Cooler with a FanMate?

DG · Post by DG » Thu Feb 26, 2004 4:35 pm

Hi!

I need a very cheap solution for cooling my Geforce 4 TI4200, and i can buy this Thermaltake Geforce 4 TI VGA Cooler (see in the picture). The thing is it's kinda noisy (29dB) so i need to silence it. Because it has a 3 pin fan connector (not 2, like the one on my geforce 4), i thought i can connect a FanMate (or something similar) to it, and reduce the voltage to 5v or 6v (to get the fan spinning). The fans specs are:
Rated Voltage 12VDC
Started Voltage 6VDC
Rated Current max. 0.28AMP
Power Input 3.36W

Would it work?

gbass01 · Post by **gbass01** » Thu Feb 26, 2004 6:36 pm

The copper heatsink is adequate, but I ripped the plastic cover and the fan out of mine and undermounted a 92mm Panaflo L1 BX at 1200 RPM. The pin-springs that come with it do not provide adequate pressure against the GPU surface, but can be swapped out for machine screws. Just don't forget insulated washers for the back of the card.

Bottom line - it's a typical Tt piece of bleep, but the copper slug itself has some advantages as compared to trying to mount a non-GPU heatsink on your GPU. It's low profile and has properly spaced mounting holes.

The more important issue in cooling the 4200 GPU is the circular dip in the GPU surface - you MUST fill it completely with AS (or whatever) to get ANY cooling. If you're really hardcore, I guess you can try to sand the GPU surface flat, but you'll probably kill your card.

EndoSteel · Post by **EndoSteel** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 2:00 pm

gbass01
If you're really hardcore, I guess you can try to sand the GPU surface flat, but you'll probably kill your card.
GPU sanding is absolutely safe for GF4 Ti cards. The core itself is about 2mm below the surface.

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 3:19 pm

gbass01, Could you explain what an "undermounted a 92mm" means? Any pics would be appreciated, or at least a description on how it was mounted.

gbass01 · Post by **gbass01** » Tue Mar 02, 2004 7:52 pm

EndoSteel: You'd have to bag and tape off the rest of the graphics card and lap in small circular motions, right? Sounds like too much trouble even for me..

m0002a: I'm pretty sure I've described by undermounting contraption in detail in a couple of my old posts. Try the search function. My solution involves a base made from a fan filter frame and foam sheeting into which I screwed in 2 4-inch #8 machine screws. The fan is attached to the top of the screws with nuts cushioned by vibration-absorbing washers, and an empty fan frame goes on top of that to reduce dead-spot effect. The whole thing is velcroed to the bottom of my case. There's room for a single PCI card in the gap between the base and the fan.