Any 7970 with factory fitted Artic Cooling?

They make noise, too.

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CoolColJ
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Any 7970 with factory fitted Artic Cooling?

Post by CoolColJ » Wed May 09, 2012 7:33 pm

Are there any Radeon 7970 fitted the Artic Cooling from the factory?

Trying to decide between this and a Galaxy 580GTX which has them fitted from factory

edh
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Re: Any 7970 with factory fitted Artic Cooling?

Post by edh » Thu May 10, 2012 12:09 am

What's wrong with retrofitting? The price differential between different versions of the same card is likely to be greater than the cost of an aftermarket cooler which means that searching for a single model with a certain cooler prefitted may be more expensive and may not get you the best card.

CoolColJ
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Re: Any 7970 with factory fitted Artic Cooling?

Post by CoolColJ » Thu May 10, 2012 2:38 am

edh wrote:What's wrong with retrofitting? The price differential between different versions of the same card is likely to be greater than the cost of an aftermarket cooler which means that searching for a single model with a certain cooler prefitted may be more expensive and may not get you the best card.
Just a pain to fit them that's all, especially these days with ram sinks and what not :(

tanassi
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Re: Any 7970 with factory fitted Artic Cooling?

Post by tanassi » Sat May 12, 2012 12:32 pm

Beware with the Galaxy card. I currently own it and I ended up removing the AC cooler. It was so noisy, even after a BIOS flash. I've read more posts where users complained at the noise and that when compared to a retrofitted AC it was just not the same.

Ive emailed Galaxy about it and thry claimed it was 100% legit.

Anyway, I ended up fitting 2 120mm fans on it with tiewraps. Its an excellent card for that specific mod as it has a HUGE cooling block on the VRM's. So you don't need to fiddle with glueing on tiny heatsinks on individual transistors etc. Tieing the fans was done in 30 mins tops! You just click off the fans section of AC cooler and attach the new fans on the already fitted cooling block/fins.

The fans run at 7v (Nexus) and the 580 is totally inaudiable in an already quiet setup!

CoolColJ
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Re: Any 7970 with factory fitted Artic Cooling?

Post by CoolColJ » Sat May 12, 2012 3:53 pm

thanks, so maybe I AC my Gigabyte GTX 570 OC instead? :)

The quietest videocard I ever had was an old 7900GT fitted with a Zalman heatpipe with a tiny fan that ran at 7v, in my old P4 system in Antec Sonata system
Which I might resuurect for when I want near silence after 12pm when web surfing :)

I could not tell if that system was on if I walked into the room. I'm trying to get my current i7 930 at 4ghz in Silverstone FT02 to that level....

edh
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Re: Any 7970 with factory fitted Artic Cooling?

Post by edh » Sun May 13, 2012 12:07 am

tanassi wrote:Beware with the Galaxy card. I currently own it and I ended up removing the AC cooler. It was so noisy, even after a BIOS flash.
What did you do with the BIOS flash? Change the fan speed with NiBiTor? It may be rather unrelated but I used to have a Galaxy 6600GT which despite the reviews from gaming websites staffed by people with no ears, was actually rather noisy. The BIOS was setup to run the fan at 100%. Makes we wonder how hard can it be to be an AIB partner when they put out such crap.

Tzupy
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Re: Any 7970 with factory fitted Artic Cooling?

Post by Tzupy » Sun May 13, 2012 2:19 am

Since you seem interested in high performance / low noise with pre-fitted cooler, maybe this would help:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS ... ect_Cu_II/
Performance is similar if not better than 7970, power draw a bit lower, cost should be about the same, and noise is relatively low.

CoolColJ
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Re: Any 7970 with factory fitted Artic Cooling?

Post by CoolColJ » Sun May 13, 2012 2:47 am

Tzupy wrote:Since you seem interested in high performance / low noise with pre-fitted cooler, maybe this would help:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS ... ect_Cu_II/
Performance is similar if not better than 7970, power draw a bit lower, cost should be about the same, and noise is relatively low.
I need good OpenCL and compute performance, which the Kepler cards do not have

Tzupy
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Re: Any 7970 with factory fitted Artic Cooling?

Post by Tzupy » Sun May 13, 2012 3:26 am

Ok, this makes sense. Maybe the roundup 7970 / 7950 review at Behardware will help?
http://www.behardware.com/articles/853- ... d-xfx.html

CoolColJ
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Re: Any 7970 with factory fitted Artic Cooling?

Post by CoolColJ » Sun May 20, 2012 4:11 pm

I modded the bios of my Gigabyte GTX570 OC with the FermiBiosEditor, after saving it with GPU-Z
Set the minimum fan speed to 15%, from the factory 40%
Then dragged the .rom file onto the latest NVFlash which automaticly burns the bios onto my card while in desktop 8)
Rebooted, and now with an ambient of 15 degrees (winter) the card idles at 32-37 degrees or so and with a fan speed of 22-25%
So quiet now! :o
Even under 100% GPU load when rendering using SLG GPU renderer (which games never quite achieve) it hits 60+ degrees and doesn't go above 45% fan speed under auto bios control.
At 50% it's quite audible, so I can avoid that region if I program in a custom fan curve with MSI Afterburner

----

The top fan on the Silverstone FT02 is the most audible noise maker.
I also replaced the top Scythe S-Flex SFF21E on my FT02 case (I originally replaced the Silverstone fan with it), which had a strobbing hum and ticking sound even at 5-7v, with Scythe Slip Stream which is way quieter at 6v, but does have a hum at higher voltage.
Massive reduction in noise now, just the three 7200rpm Samsung drives add a bit some hum/whine.

My old Seasonic 850w M12D powersupply seems pretty quiet and the FT02 case fans run so slow and quiet, since I connected it directly to my fan controller, instead of to the motherboard. And even at 12v, the case fan speed switch doesn't make any difference - maybe the controller can't only supply it with enough volts???.... I can't feel much airflow directly above the case fans, but on the top vents of the case I can feel a slight breeze.
And even at this minimal speed it does cool the CPU more than the massive dual fan Noctua NH-D14 heatsink fan combo! :shock:
I did a rendering test with 99% CPU load on all cores, and my OC'ed i7 at 4 ghz would hit 62 degrees. If I dropped the case fan controller voltage to 10v, the temps of the CPU cores and chipset would rise 3-4 degrees, with no audible difference. That surprised me, that the FT02 case fans would help the CPU that much at such a slow speed!
I guess it's the positive air pressure and vertical venting nature of the case coming into action :wink:


Still not so quiet that I can't tell if it's on, but a step in the right direction. The Noctua 120mm fans that came with the NH-D14 heatsink have a bit of pulsing noise or something now, but not so noticeable with the case shut - I was going to use the Slipstream in their place originally but the fan clips don't fit and it's difficult to get any other fan in there. Maybe a set of newer Noctua fans might do the trick
Once the drives are swapped out for an SSD and one Eco storage drive and maybe one of the new power supplies that have fans that rarely spin up I will be there I think.....


Oh, the case interior was so clean in the FT02 after about a year+ of running - just some gunk on the bottom intake and filters, and top case fan - positive pressure FTW :D
I love this case....

Pafenfalcon
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Re: Any 7970 with factory fitted Artic Cooling?

Post by Pafenfalcon » Tue Jun 12, 2012 12:05 am

I am convinced that ARCTIC 7970 is the best choice. It is optimized for 7970 video card model. It cools not only the GPU, but also the RAM on the card. Three parallel fans fully cover the surface of the video card, which ensure high cooling efficiency.

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