Hi ppl,
Yesterday I went nuts on a cooling spree for my computer including buying a heatpipe for my geforce 4 ti4200 card. The only thing is, without a fan blowing on the heatsink, my card overheats. I was hoping that the passive cooling would be enough, but obviously not for my fancy games. My question is:

What's the point of spending $30 on a 'quiet' heatsink if you need a fan blowing on it anyway?

Thanks

BTW.. I also got the Zalman 'cnps6000 cooler', and their hard drive cooler and have been very impressed. Nice and quiet

Because you can get away with using a seriously undervolted (5 volts) 80mm, 92mm or 120mm fan on a Zalman FB123 bracket to cool it with. Any of these fan solutions would be orders of magnitude quieter than the stock, noisy little 40mm fans that come on the card.

I really wonder what kind of case temp you've (and other folks) are running.

I've got a GF4 ti4200, just about 1 year old. For the last couple months I've been running it with the stock heatsink only, stock fan unplugged. I could run 30 minutes of 3DMark2001/2003 with no crashes or artifacts. Yeah, that wee lil heatsink was REALLY DAMN hot, but no problems with the vid card.

Just recently I upgraded to the ZM17 vid card cooler for the heckuvit, still with no fan.

Thanks for the reply!

I attached another small fan to the zalman 'fan arm' arm to blow sideways across the heatsink, very quiet, your right. The heatsinks feel cold, but I am experiencing some instability in heavy duty 3d apps and games. Maybe I have another problem.. I'm just confused because everything worked fine before I added the mods.

Back to the drawing board

Hi zyz,
Thanks for your reply! Unfortunately I dont have the resources to test my heat, but I think it's amazing that you can run that card without problems. Usually it will take anywhere from 15 mins to an hour for my card to freeze up without the fan installed. I don't think that my case gets unusually hot.. Maybe my video card is to blame.

I do wish I had a way to check the GPU temp. I know that with the stock heatsink and no fan, I could only touch the heatsink for a 1-2 seconds. Damn hot. On the back of the GPU I could touch for ~10 seconds.

With the ZM17 cooler the back of the vid card is still quite warm, but I can hold my hand there now.

chooks,

If the big heatsinks on the Zalman feel cold, you've got an installation issue.

Even when just idling along, those heatsinks should be warmer than ambient. Here's a simple test: After the machine's been on for a while, but not doing anything strenuous, reach in there and touch the heatsinks. Then touch something that's just at ambient temp, like the inside of the case wall. If the heatsink is the same temp as the case walls, then it's not recieving the heat from the GPU properly.

Did you follow the directions carefully? Did you put on enough thermal goop? (you need more than you do for a CPU)

Try removing the cooler and re-installing it, doubling checking all the screws and bolts.

Thanks Rusty,
Actually, when I disable the fan thats blowing on the HS, both 'plates' get quite hot... So I'm not sure if it's a heat conductivity issue. With fans off - It's quieter than hell but twice as hot