SPCR

Trying to do something about this whiny little fan that came with this card. I can unplug it and try a panaflo, but I was wondering if the panaflo can be plugged into the header that the tiny fan uses? Is it safe? functional?
Or must I put it in the motherboard instead?

I suggest unscrewing the fan and looking at the label on the underside. I think mine was a 40mm Delta. It should list the amps required by the fan, as well as the voltage (which is almost certainly 12V). If the current draw is over 0.1A, then you can safely swap it with an L1A, which I think draws that much current. If the draw is lower, then you might have problems running the Panaflo. My bet is that the little whirling dervish draws more current than the 80mm L1A.

I just unplugged the GF3 fan, used a zalman-123 bracket, finessed an 80mm L1A onto it in a parallel fashion with velcro (it's facing the card just as if it were located in the adjacent PCI slot). I must say, I've been in a good mood because of this. It totally eliminated that whiny card fan, making this computer MUCH more quiet.

So did you just leave the old hsf on there?

WannaOC wrote:So did you just leave the old hsf on there?

Yes I did. It's a PNY graphics card. It has a fairly large heatsink attached to it. In fact, because of the heatsink, I momentarily considered a fanless approach. In the end, I thought better of that idea.

Just wondering, did your case temp raise, lower, or stay about the same? Also I would love a pic of this little setup as it's either add a wb (50.00) or a L1A (5.00?) to quiet my radeon down a bit.

I can take a pic of it tomorrow and email it to you. Or if somebody has a server for upload I'll do that, although the former would be the easiest and quickest.

As for case temps I don't really know. I haven't installed a program that monitors temps but I know I should. I have gamed heavily with it without any sign of problems; this is after a couple of hours of quake 3 team arena. I would be willing to bet that the card actually stays cooler as I have the panaflo at 12 volts and pointing right at the heatsink, hitting a larger area than the original could.

I think the reason the sound is muffled so well probably has to do with location/position of the fan in the case and the melamine foam I have used. I'm going to fanmate it to a lower setting to see if there is any degree of noticable noise reduction. As it is now, I can only hear this computer when I'm within about 2 or 3 feet of it? Beyond 4 feet or so I'm not sure if it's on without looking at the LED. So it could use some more quieting for the strictest of SPCR standards, but this thing is a very quiet machine.