Although I am not unimpressed with the AVGA Silencer, because it is quiet, but I really gained nothing in terms of quietness or overclocking. I think this has to do with how well my do-it-yourself cooler worked before installing this thing.
First, the low vs. high setting: I refuse to run this at the high setting, even though I would acheive a better overclock (but only slightly - not enough to really count, IMO). The high is just too loud for the silencer. It's not unbearable, but not quite by SPCR standards.
The low setting might be roughly that of an undervolted panaflo L1A, but I tend to think it has a whine to it that the Panaflo does not; then again, maybe it's just me.
Second, a description of my do-it-yourself that was in place before the AVGA Silencer:
I simply used a Zalman 123 to position an 80mm L1A at roughly 40-45 degrees. It hit the card directly. See my crude drawing. This way it hit the stock heatsink in full, and it hit the RAM chips on that side of the card.
The part that was really "ghetto" was that I used cardboard as a way to seal things off. I made sure that only fresh air came in from 3 slots where the slot guards were removed (3700amb case). And also, I did this at the top of the fan, which appeared as a big triangular piece of cardboard when the case is open (veiwed from its side as in my drawing). I sort of "boxed" the fan on all sides to its left, where air entered, including the bottom where the fan sat on the 3 PCI slots themselves with a velcro strip. This way only fresh air came in, hit the card, carried itself past the card, then was carried up to the main exhaust. This really worked just as well, if not better than the AVGA Silencer, although it took a bit more time to get into place. And the 3700amb just has good ventilation for such a setup, in my opinion, especially if you try to copy Ralf and tuck things away (which I did not do nearly as well as he did).
I ran the 80mm L1A at around 9-10 volts, but I can tell you that it was not louder than the AVGA silencer even with the "low" setting to my ears.
So why did I ditch the setup? I mainly wanted to recover the 3 PCI slots while also getting rid of the "ghetto" job.
What I am thinking of doing now is unplugging the AVGA fan and using a Panaflo L1A in a similar fashing as before, except this time it will be going across that huge aluminum heatsink. Does anybody know if the plastic can be removed from the heatsink of the AVGA?
