UPDATE
I bought VM-101 which arrived yesterday.

For a mini-review go here

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Hi, not often that I start a thread here, but here goes.

I recently transfered my system from an aluminum case to a P180 and bought a Scythe SCNJ-1000 as well. The system would be pretty quiet if it wasn't for two things: four harddrives, most of which have 3 platters and noisy Arctic Silencer 5 Rev1 which howls at anything greater than 7V and clicks at all voltages even when fed through a motherboard/fan controller. I can't really do anything about hard drive noise except to try to apply some noisedampening foam around the case and around hard drive cage specifically which might slightly alevate the problem. But what to get for a video card cooler is a problem. So far there are several choices:

1. Arctic Silencer 5 Rev 3
2. Zalman VF-700 (either CU or AL-CU)
3. Aerocool VM-101
4. Aerocool VM-102
5. Thermalright V-1 Ultra


Ideally I would have preffered one of the Scythe prototype coolers that have a big heatlined heatsink sitting outside the case so that I could duct my 12cm exhaust fan to it with no additional increase in noise, but alas, those are not available for sale, so I'm stuck with the 5 choices listed above. The videocard in question is 6800GT overclocked to 6800ULTRA, the card is downclocked to 200Mhz in 2D mode, but unfortunately this doesn't bring the temperature down much.


The first two choices are painfully oibvious.

1. The first choice is to get another Arctic Silencer. There are several problems with it however. One is that with every new revision Arctic Silencer promised no click, and yet, both Rev1 and Rev2 typically develop a click pattern after a few months. AFAIK Rev3 has been out for only a few months so there is no reliable information if the third reincarnation clicks or not. Even if it does not click, it will most likely emit a low frequency growl as my current AS5rev1 does. On the bright side it does exhaust the not air out of the case.

2. Zalman VF-700. Another well established cooler. Should cool the GPU very effectively, even at the lowest voltage. However it dumps all the heat back into the case and according to some users here at SPCR it's not that quiet. Several users reported inconsistent sound character and some clicking. Can anyone comment on how quiet VF-700 fan actually is compared to reference 80mm panaflo at identical voltages?


Now the last three collers is where it gets interesting.

3/4. Aerocool VM-101/VM-102
I merged these coolers together because they are very similar in build and should be pretty similar in cooling capacity as well. VM-102 availability in the US is a problem so I may have to settle for 101. According to the reviews this cooler works very well with 6600GT, but not with 6800GT or higher. I actually find this surprising because at 7V my Arctic Silencer barely moves any air, and yet my card is totally stable, so I find it hard to believe that a heatsink with such huge area of dissapation cannot cool 6800GT. Well, let's suppose this is true, did anyone try this heatsink with 6800GT and a fan running at low RPM to move some air through the fins? How does it perform then? Another concern is clearance, I have no idea if the heatsink will fit below my SCNJ-1000. Anyone have any information on how high VM101 and 102 rise above the back of the videocard (102 appear a little slimer than 101, but I still don't have any reliable information).

5. Thermalright V-1 Ultra. Another heatpipe cooler. Once again there is a concern if this is going to fit into my system. In any case if I'm going to be running this cooler, I would rather run it with a 25mm panaflo in pull configuration as opposed to stock 15mm fan in push configuration. This review ( http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Ther ... /V1Ultra/3 ) shows that V-1 could potentially fit into my system, maybe even with a 25mm pahaflo. The only thing I'm concerned about is proximity of the heatsink to the back of the videocard. This potentially creates three problems. One is that heatsink may inadvertedly touch the card, two - there may be a an increased turbulence noise as the air gets drawn through the fins in such close proximity to the card and three is that the efficiency suffers since the air will take the way of the less resistance around the edges of the heatsink. So the actual effectiveness and quietness of the cooler is under the question.




Right now I'm leaning to V-1 Ultra, if I can make sure it does fit into my case. It doesn't require any fan ducting, should be pretty quiet with 80mm panaflo and it exhausts air very close to the case exhaust fan which is next best thing to arctic silencer. The next choice is Aerocool, but that will probably require some ingenious fan mounting/ducting to make sure it 's getting enough air which I'm reluctant to do (yes, I'm lazy).


So.... What are your thoughts? Can anyone comment on any of the cooling choices, especially on the last three? I know there are quite a few of reviews on each one of these coolers on the web, but I'm more interested in SPCR review/opinion.

Well, I'm sorry I can only offer my NV Silencer experience. It is a good one, though. I use RivaTuner to tone down the fan speed, and things are seriously quiet. Quiet as in I have to get down within a foot of the PC to hear anything. I do not hearing any clicking noises. An extremely low resonance maybe, but no clicking. But again, it is inaudible at normal distances. I had to set the fan control on RivaTuner to 25%. I run it like that for games or desktop, doesn't matter. Temps are good, much better than the stock cooler, especially under load.

I think my next choice would be the Zalman VF700. I would try it at the lowest fan speed as well. Reports are that it does cool well, even without the exhaust of hot air as seen with the Silencer. Also, easy installation compared to the last solution you mention by ThermalRight.

Final note that is hopefully encouraging: if the literature and user reports I read on these 3 coolers are accurate, ALL of them are excellent at cooling and quieting. Shades of difference between the non-passive options? I'm sure that's probably the case, and no doubt there is sample variance that would explain why a few people have negative reports (speaking stricly of the fanned solutions, but again, fans can be turned down). The point I'm hoping to make is that you will not lose with any of them.

I wish I could help you with the question of fit of the ThermalRight, but I have no way of knowing.

I'm glad your ACS performs fine. Like I said already, they are typically much quiter when new and mine is probably already 9 months old. It clicks and has low frequency rumble/hum/howl, ACS5 and my four harddrives are two loudest things in my PC, this fact alone, that ACS5 is as loud as 4 hard drives should tell you something. The noise character of course is different, but ACS5 is just as annoying as harddrives. When I unplug it, my computer is significantly quiter, and I ran it at 7V from a rheostat!

I already checked and all coolers I listedin my first post should clear (thanks for a useful link in one of the threads below). There are about 50-52mm from the back of my videocard to the CPU cooler. VM-102 is 34mm high, VM-101 is 42-44mm high, V-1 is 28.5mm high which would have even allowed me to mount a 25mm fan on it. Most of these would have left little clearance to the heatsink, but all of them should have fit.

I already ordered VM-101. I decided on it because VM-102 is impossible to buy in US, save from silencio who would have to ship from EU and it's not necessarily better than 101, thermalright on the other hand charges an arm and a leg for its products which aren't really any better or even worse than competitor's solutions. V-1 Ultra costs more than SCNJ-1000, that IMO is ridiculous. To be fair Thermalright has always been that way. Anyway, I checked, and there is some residual airflow from the CPU heatsink blowing to the back of the case which should hit VM-101, hopefully in combination with rear exhaust fan there will be enough draft to cool the videocard to an acceptable level. If not... well, at least I tried, the ACS5 is driving me nuts.


PS funnily when I searched for VM-101 on the forum, it turns out I already created a similar thread in the past about cooler choice. I chose ACS5 then since it just came out and was one of the first adopters. Turned out to be a wrong choice.

That's funny about what your search tunred up. I've done that before, completely forgetting other posts I have made. But your story is one I've heard before about the Silencers. I have one of the early Silencers for my R9800 and it had 3 revisions. I remember many people complaining of the noise issues as time went by. For me, though, it is still silent on the "low" fan setting.

My current Silencer is good so far, but it is only 2 months old. If it goes loud, i'll try the zalman solution.

Post back and let us know how it goes with your new choice.

Well as far as I remember the reason for early Silencer revisions were mainly compability with newer 9800/9600/AIW boards, not because they were loud. With ACS5 the reason for revisions was supposedly improved accoustics, which evidently didn't improve at all.

My VM-101 should arrive on friday, I just hope UPS will leave it at my door as last time I went to pick up my package from UPS facility it took them an hour to find it and bring it to me.

Hey Jazz:
I'm also working out a plan to cool a 6800GT (Gigabyte GV-N68T256DH's 256MB & agp)
( http://tinyurl.com/82gnz )
but the dilemma I face is them ram chips: cool w sinks or leave simple. My last ramsink work was sad... almost as if the heavy metal was pulling the chips away from PCB or something... and that wasn't even BGA!

I am not convinvced merely by fact that the OEM over-engineered this thing: maybe it was just clever promotion to help n00bs believe it looks so cool ...enuf for $450! How do you see the issue of ram?

Ramsink? Personally, I'm going to try and run it without ramsinks at first. First, BGA chips don't heat as much as the old memory, second personally I think leaving ram w/o heatsinks is still better than the stock cooler which had something that looked like a 2mm thermal cloth! and third, I know for a fact that Gigabyte sells a 6800GT w/o ramsinks, so I know it can be done. Of course I also overclock memory to 1100Mhz, but I think it can handle that. In any case, I'll try and see what happens. If possible I'll leave the slot cover under the video card open and try to construct a small duct that pulls air over the GPU block and memory.

In any case I can always add ramsinks later, it should be easy enough as long as they are self-adhesive. The only problem might be top two chips that will be directly under VM-101 heatpipes - there might not be enough clearance to fit ramsinks. I could always try bending the fins a bit to make them fit, but that's extreme, I do not expect that I will need heatinks at all.

No RAM sinks here either, and I have played games for a while with the RAM overclocked to 1100 without problems, but i'm not really sure that the extra 100MHz memory clock really helps performance. In fact, i'm growing to think that in most instances overclocking is a bit over-rated. But then again, i've never benchmarked my favorte games in a 'standard clock vs. overclocked' experiment.

I would say an 100MHz memory overclock on your card might give a performance increase of around 5FPS typical, 10FPS at most. In situations where a game is on the borderline of beeing playable a overclock might be the solution that makes the game enjoyable, but mostly the increased performance from videocard overclocking is icing on the cake.

The cooler arrived yesterday, installed it today in my PC.

For a mini-review go here

"...I know for a fact that Gigabyte sells a 6800GT w/o ramsinks...." -JJR

Jazz, that is a very compelling clue! Would you please put up a link to that item if you can, y'know for the cynics around here!

Another voice on this same topic had a good point for those who (like me) plan to remove the original harness of HSF/pipes and slap a waterblock on the gpu: that after such a mod those ram chips may be more needful of special consideration than usual: this arrangement will leave very little of the random leakage of circulating air that may have been an unplanned benefit of the HSF. Not my thought- but it sounds reasonable to me.

I hope you'll get back to us promptly with your experience with yer new board. (and good luck with it!}
I hope to mount a waterblock to 6800gt tonite...this *is* a refurb and if it is defective in some weird way I didn't expect I don't want too much time to pass before begging a RMA. It might look fishy.

PS. JJR I just wannta thank you for the "miniReview" (your words and way way too modest! Very nicely done: literate and well presented too.
Cheers!
PPS New arrivals: it's at http://tinyurl.com/8laxc

I actually made a little mistake, it wasn't 6800GT, but 7800GT. But since both cards have the memory clocked at 1000Mhz it still proves the point that bga memory chips can be run fanless.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/09/ ... age16.html

Since it appears you've already read my review, you must have noticed that the board is running w/o ramsinks and without any problems.