My Experiences Silencing a Radeon 8500

Cooling Processors quietly

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starsky
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My Experiences Silencing a Radeon 8500

Post by starsky » Thu May 08, 2003 1:06 am

OK. So I removed my radeon 8500 64mb fan a while back... and now I wanted to see if I can play some games without damaging this baby, so it is time for some teperature measurements.

I placed a K type thermocouple on the center of the heatsink with gaffa.

The starting point. Ambient room terperature 19.3C
With The Case open. After 10 minutes idle operation. 38.6C
With the Case closed. After another 20 minutes of idle operation. 41.5C

ok.. now for the load test.....
20 minutes of counter-strike. Temp after 20 minutes fluctuating from 45.3 to 46.4C

Time to return to idle temp of 41.5C after exit CS - 3 minutes 30 seconds.

No texture corruption, nothing. Perfect Gameplay.

Temps taken with a digital thermometer and +-2c accuracy.

Vector
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Post by Vector » Thu May 08, 2003 3:29 am

OK, one question since I have a 9000 and am wanting to do something similar. What is a K type thermocouple? And what is gaffa?

Ok that's 2 questions.

starsky
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Post by starsky » Thu May 08, 2003 4:20 am

I have one of these units that I paid AU$110 (US$75) for on sale a few weeks back.

http://www.dse.com.au/cgi-bin/dse.store ... View/Q1437

Gaffa is thick black sticky tape, used for everything. Much stronger than any other tape. VERY sticky stuff. Chicks could use it to wax with almost ;)

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Post by Vector » Thu May 08, 2003 4:46 am

Thanks, starsky.

rpc180
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Post by rpc180 » Thu May 08, 2003 5:40 am

I was always curious, I installed a HP80 on the 8500, but PCB temps started to worry me to the point where I ended up supplementing the setup with a L1a at 5V. I don't have a thermal monitor so all my measures were done "by hand" :wink: Starsky, could you do a temperature check on the PCB area at the leading edge between the two ram chips?

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Post by starsky » Thu May 08, 2003 12:10 pm

sorry, by leading ege do you mean the back of the card (where there is eome memory), or the front of the card furthest away from the slot plate, or futhest from the motherboard ?

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Post by rpc180 » Thu May 08, 2003 12:20 pm

Furthest from the motherboard slot? Thanks for trying :)

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Post by starsky » Thu May 08, 2003 12:25 pm

Kool - can do. I am just heading off to work... when I get home tonight I will open the case up and put the thermocoupleon again.

Do you want it tested under full load?

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Post by rpc180 » Thu May 08, 2003 12:35 pm

Both if possible. I finger tested it while running just web browsers and stuff. Then I ran it with an hour of FPS games and the card was uncomfortably hot. :?

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Post by goose_wh » Thu May 08, 2003 12:53 pm

I took my HSF off my 8500Le & replaced it with the zalman copper fin job, worked fine dissipating the heat nicely, then 5 days ago i realised the zalman HS had fallen off (crappy adhesive/ bad application), cant have been off more than a week or so, but i didnt notice any difference with my computer, but like RPc i found that the GPU ran too hot for my liking without HS on, so i glued the original HSf back on, but left the fan unplugged. Just to be on the safe side till these new 9600'scome out - fans.

starsky
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Post by starsky » Thu May 08, 2003 7:57 pm

Was the Heatsink too hot to touch? Did you measure with a thermometer?

Above 50 degrees is hot, but under full load playing counter-strike, if there is no texture dropping, then it isn't too hot. (imho)

Has anyone seen any tolerance specifications for the Radeon 8500? I can't seem to find them.

Also: I am sporting a big chunk missing on my left index finger from the heatsink. The damn thing without the fan is sharp as hell.

I have been thinking about trying to design a PCI slot 80mm fan bracket
eg, pcb that plugs into the pci slot with two holes for mounting an 80mm fan using isolators.... The PCI slot closest to the AGP slot could be used to have an 80mm fan blowing directly at the radeon.... I just haven't seen them before.

Is this the sort of stuff you can make yourself?

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Post by Ralf Hutter » Fri May 09, 2003 4:20 am

starsky wrote:I have been thinking about trying to design a PCI slot 80mm fan bracket
eg, pcb that plugs into the pci slot with two holes for mounting an 80mm fan using isolators.... The PCI slot closest to the AGP slot could be used to have an 80mm fan blowing directly at the radeon.... I just haven't seen them before.

Is this the sort of stuff you can make yourself?
I've seen a few different takes on this. This one's my favorite.

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Post by p5 » Fri May 09, 2003 9:48 am

I have a sapphire r8500le (250/250).

i took the noisy stock fan off and have a generic 80mm @ 7v (pretty much quiet), attached to a flattened out pci blanking plate type mod.


i dunno how safe it is exactly. the stock heatsink is a bit warm but i run the card at stock 250/250 speeds. dont really need the speed.

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Post by starsky » Sun May 11, 2003 4:32 pm

rpc.... sorry for not responding... I have been a little under the weather for the last few days.

Back at work today, so I will attempt again tonight. Sorry for the delay.

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Post by rpc180 » Sun May 11, 2003 5:04 pm

Its alright man :) thanks again for trying, I know how it is!

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Post by starsky » Sun May 11, 2003 6:53 pm

as a matter of interest... my box has been up for 4 days solid and hasn't skipped a beat.

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Post by starsky » Mon May 12, 2003 1:05 am

ok RPC, I taped the thermocouple to one of the memory chips and ran splintercell for 20 minutes. Ambient temp 18.3C and the Chip temp was 34.3C


So no probs at all.

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Post by rpc180 » Mon May 12, 2003 10:09 am

Lol, okay great :) I can take that fan off the Zalman bracket! I was seriously worried that PCB was reaching into the 50s or something :)

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Post by starsky » Mon May 12, 2003 2:21 pm

rpc I would stil lrecommend doing some temp testing. IT could be a different variant of card... I can comfortably touch my heatsink and ram.

You may have airflow issues... or a different card. My memory is Hynix (so I think my card is out of China)

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Post by rpc180 » Mon May 12, 2003 7:56 pm

Well, the fan can stay, its only late at night that the two fans end up creating vibrations that are audible ... and the HD whine still overpowers that to some extent ... it hasn't ended yet, but the comp is stable while folding ...

I really should hit up radio shack for a thermocouple with the next paycheck :?

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Post by rpc180 » Tue May 13, 2003 4:56 am

For curiosity's sake. Starsky, what's your current fan setup inside the case? And thanks again for checking the PCB temperature for me :)

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Post by starsky » Tue May 13, 2003 7:51 pm

RPC, I currently have:

Antec Sonata - running Stock Sonata 380w Single fan PSU
120mm Stock Sonata case fan running at 5v
Standard 60mm Heatsink/Fan on my AMD XP2400+ CPU

That's it.

no intakes, nothing.
and I do run this thing pretty hard.

As soon as pccasegear get them back in stock I am replacing the HSF with an SLK800 and an 80mm panaflo L Series with Fanmate.

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Post by rpc180 » Wed May 14, 2003 8:19 am

From what it sounds like I think I know why you're getting those nice temps :) My only exhast is the 80L1a in the PSU running at 7V. The fan on the CPU is a 92mm panaflo at 6V with duct. And the one over the GPU is a 5V panaflo 80L1a. There are a few heat sources though including the TV card that's under the GPU and the sound card (which actually gets warm)... I guess I need it there!
:roll:

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Post by starsky » Wed May 14, 2003 7:26 pm

rpc - I disconnected my Exhaust fan for 5 minutes and the temps went through the roof on the video card, and my PSU fan sped up like a bitch on heat.

A 120mm exhaust fan BELOW the PSU seems to be a VERY VERY good thing ;)

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