SPCR

My video card's fan (on Nvidia geforce4) makes far too much noise. After extensive research I found that Titan's TTC-CUV1AB video card replacement heatsink/fan is the perfect solution for me. Most video card coolers require that the PCI card slot next to the video card not be used -- this space is needed for the cooler. I don't have a PCI card slot that I can give up. Titan's fan is apparently the quietest replacement fan on the market -- per reviews at 2fastcpu, overclockercafe, etc.

Unfortunately, with extensive searches (using google) I could not find any place that sells this cooler. If you know where I can purchase this item, your reply would be much appreciated.

You forgot to tell us in which country you are located. If you are in France, Belgium, Luxemburg or Switzerland, there are lot of places you can buy from.

http://www.rue-hardware.com/prix/details/3816/ or http://www.monsieurprix.com/listing/gen/J000014966.html list a lot of web sites selling CUV1AB , but i seriously doubt they will ship outside the former countries.

Sorry, I forgot to mention I live in the United States. If Titan's VGA cooler (# TTC-CUV1AB) is not sold in the US, I'm willing to purchase overseas if seller will sell with reasonable shipping fee. Any ideas on how to purchase this item are welcomed.

js47, did you read the fan facts sticky? if not, why not? from that sticky:

Video cards with noisy fans can be replaced with various fanless HS from Zalman. But fanless doesn’t always work, and the HS replacement is not always necessary. If there's room above the PCI/AGP slots, a low noise 80-92mm fan on a Zalman 123 or 165 fan bracket (or facsimile) will bathe both sides of the VGA card with enough airflow to replace tiny fans, usually w/o any mod of the HS. Often good with a 5-7V Panaflo (80mm, L). This is the simplest, cheapest effective quiet VGA cooling - if you have room. The 123 is an excellent solution for CPU fan mounting, and allows a second fan to be mounted over the VGA card, as John Coyle showed us.

Mike C.,
Yes I have read the "fan" sticky. The problem I have with the fan “sticky” solution of using a bracketed fan is: the only space I have to blow air over my video card would be to position the 80mm fan so it is also blowing air at the only intake vent on my PC case. That would work against my Zalman 92mm case fan that exhausts air from the case thru a hood that first pulls the air across the CPU’s heatsink. So I am not sure this bracketed fan suggestion is a workable solution for me. Perhaps I could build an air duct for a bracket-held fan, but this could get more complicated than simply replacing the fan/heatsink on my video card as I’m trying to do..

If I can't find a way to purchase the Titan video card replacement fan, I would try your suggestion of using Zalman’s 123 fan bracket, but this raises 3 new questions:

(1) To power a fan attached to Zalman's bracket, should I use the 2-pin 12 volt connector that now powers the noisy fan on my video card. Do I look for 12 volt 80-92mm fans, does Panaflo make a 12 volt 2-pin model, or what device do I purchase to convert my video card's 12v to Panaflo’s 5-7 volts?
(2) My video card’s noisy fan is rated .07 amp (1 watt). Might larger 80-92mm fans require more power than my Nvidia geforce4 video card was designed to provide? Or does Panaflo’s fan have a 4-pin connector/adapter that will fit into unused connectors (4-pin, 12 & 5volts) on my power supply cables?
(3) Should I also remove the noisy fan above my video card’s heatsink to permit better airflow from the bracket-mounted fan?

It's difficult to guess what someone else's level of noise tolerance is, but in general, the smaller fans (~60mm or less) are impossible to silence --shjort of stopping them, at least to my ears. If you slow them to the point where they really are quiet, then they blow so little air as to be useless...

Anyway, I am not sure I understand your space issue. The Z. fan bracket positions the fan perpendicular to the VGA card, so it blows down towards the mobo.

Specific responses:

1) Almost any 80mm 12VDC fan rated for "Low" or "L" speed will be very quiet at 5~7V, much more so than any stock small VGA fan. Use a spare mobo header. for voltage. Panaflos are know quantities and very quiet at 7v or less.
2) A Zalman fanmate1 is the easiest cheap device for fan speed control: $6-8, 5-11V. This gives you options -- if the VGA is too hot/unstanble at 5V, you canm slowly up the fan speed to the point where it is ok.
3) yes, remove the original VGA fan (not HS - I know obvious...)

It's difficult to guess what someone else's level of noise tolerance is, but in general, the smaller fans (~60mm or less) are impossible to silence --shjort of stopping them, at least to my ears. If you slow them to the point where they really are quiet, then they blow so little air as to be useless...

Anyway, I am not sure I understand your space issue. The Z. fan bracket positions the fan perpendicular to the VGA card, so it blows down towards the mobo.

Specific responses:

1) Almost any 80~92mm 12VDC fan rated for "Low" or "L" speed will be very quiet at 5~7V, much more so than any stock small VGA fan. Use a spare mobo header. for voltage. Panaflos are know quantities and very quiet at 7v or less.
2) A Zalman fanmate1 is the easiest cheap device for fan speed control: $6-8, 5-11V. This gives you options -- if the VGA is too hot/unstable at 5V, you can slowly up the fan speed to the point where it is ok.
3) yes, remove the original VGA fan (not HS - I know obvious...)

MikeC,

Thanks of all your help. Three final questions. First, what exactly is a "spare mobo header"?. My Dell Dimension 8200 proprietary motherboard has a 3-pin connector to supply voltage to a case fan, and that's it. A call to Dell Tech Support confirmed this. So I am assuming I will need to get voltage for my Panaflo fan directly from an unused power supply cable OR from the 2-pin 12v fan connector on my video card.

(2) Do you know if there are connectors/adapters that allow a power supply cable with its standard 4-pin connector to provide voltage to a Panaflo fan and/ar the Zalman fanmate1?

AIR FLOW CONCERN: My PIC and video cards are stacked horizontally in the rear bottom corner of my PC case (like pancakes). I can easily blow air downward over the top side of my video card (its the top card in the stack). But blowing air over the video card's bottom side where the heat sink resides will result in questionable air flow. To also blow air over the video card's heat sink I'd need to blow air towards the end of the video card (air flowing towards the back of case). Unfortunately, my top (video) and bottom (sound) cards are full height. They touch both the mobo (right side of case) and left side of case. I'm trying to blow air between my cards, but there is no outlet for the air to leave -- other than to come back against the direction the fan is blowing. I am guessing that this is a common situation and your bracket fan proposal might still work. However it would be nice to know if my video card is overheating with the new setup.

(3) Is their any relatively simple and inexpensive device I can purchase that could measure the surface temperature of my video card's heatsink while its noisy fan was being used, and later when I'm using a bracketed Panaflo fan instead?

Thanks very much for all your previous advice. I promise no more questions on this.

mobo header

A 3-pin 12V output on the motherboard for Fan + RPM sensing. You obviously don't have any spare ones.

connectors/adapters that allow a power supply cable with its standard 4-pin connector to provide voltage to a Panaflo fan and/ar the Zalman fanmate1

Surely! They look some thing like this...
http://store6.yimg.com/I/svcompucycle_1716_301158. This one has a pass-through 4-pin IDE connector so you don't lose it by connecting the fan.

AIR FLOW CONCERN -- you can't really tell till you try it. If you want to try it and have a spare fan & a way to connect it, have a look at the 2nd to last picture on this page -- I used PCI slot covers as fan brackets: http://www.silentpcreview.com/goto.php?t=s&id=14&a=1

Any digital thermometer with a prob;e on a wire will do, but I would not bother. Easy enough to tell with stability.

Hope all that makes sense.

My GF4Ti is an MSI, whose 80mm fan is supposedly among the loudest.
What I've done for now is using a pass-through cable like the one Mike said, and changed the wires to 5V. The fan's whining mostly faded, but I haven't used 3D much lately so I don't know if it's completely stable under stress.