During the 3DMark2001 benchmark suite, my newly-installed ZM80A-HP became too hot to touch for more than 10 seconds! Is this safe for the GPU? How can I stick a fan on this without shattering my oh-so-precious silence?

Relevant System Info:
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro
Zalman ZM80A-HP
AMD Duron 1GHz
ThermalTake Volcano 9 with Vantec Stealth
Vantec Stealth 80mm @5v intake fan
Enermax "Whisper" 350w power supply with Panaflo fans
Zalman silent Northbridge cooler on Via KT266

Glue a 40mm Delta....no, wait.....

You should be able to put a quiet fan (ie. L1A) at 5V blowing across the card and get good cooling results. Cf. Mike's Silencing a P4-1.6A oc'd to 2GHz article, 2nd to last picture on the first page for a DIY bracket idea. Undervolting + the fan being inside the case should make it very quiet.

You're probably okay with the combo. I have a ZM80A-HP on my 9500Pro and despite being hot, I haven't had any problems with it. I've had the Zalman/9500Pro combo it for about 4-5 months without any artifacting, nor lockups. It was originally in my system with a P3-1GHz, and now it's with my P4-3GHz which is a pretty hot system and it's still been fine.

I use the Zalman 123 Bracket with their 92MM fan blowing on my ultra-OC'ed Radeon 7500 (Yeah, I know it's old...but cheap!) @ 7v and it helps bunch...Plus the Zalman is cheap too...

Temps below 50 C are perfectly safe. I have an old gf3(non-Ti) with pal8045t (before the age of zm80hp), and it is ~53 C (measured from the heatsink). It becomes hot to touch in 2-3 seconds.

p.s. I glued a 1x2x1 cm heatsink to mb's ata133 controller, and it is well over 50 C. Also southbridge is quite hot with 4x4x1 cm heatsink, and mb mosfets with 3cm tall heatsinks are over 65 C (measured from the heatsink), burning fingers immediately.

One concern I have: At high temperatures such as these, should I be worried about the Zalman-brand thermal grease melting and running away from the core or boiling? When I go to LAN parties, the core may be sustaining temperatures such as these for as many as 5 hours at a time.

Of course I don't have the exact same setup, but my ZM80A equipped 9700 was too hot to touch when running 3dMark 2001. At first I was worried and thought about a fan, but now over half a year later, I've stopped worrying about it since: a) 3dmark didn't show any glitches, b) my card's still working perfectly, and c) even the summer heat hasn't killed it.

If you want silence, be prepared to be at temps overclockers would feel nervous about .

And then on the flipside, at least you know your heatsink is working when you can't touch either side of the ZM80a safely

Hahahahaaaaaaaaaaa

Good point Sgt.

So:

1. Get the Heatpipe
2. Get the Zalman Bracket (I use the 92MM @ 7v, but you can slightly hear it...maybe a Pana would be better)...

if its working stable with no artifacts don't worry too much about the temperature. Electronics are more resilient than most imagine. Hard drives are what you should be worried about, temperature wise. If you don't need totally passive operation then you could put a 5 or 7v 80mm Panaflo over it but not big deal.

As far as the stock thermal paste goes, even the cheapest, worst type (which Zalman is probably using) is rated to well over 100 degrees C so not to worry.

True.

I've been thinking about taking my Zalman off and replacing it with either a panaflo or Stealth since it would be much quieter...I guess I like the airflow supplied right now during the HOT summer months.

Radeon 7500 maxxxed. 333Mhz 333DDR

As far as case fans go, I have two: a Panaflo L1A in my Enermax power supply, and a 5-volted Panaflo on my hard drives. The two rear case fan spaces in my case (SX1030 clone) are just left as passive vents.

I want to avoid having any more fans than I have right now if it is possible:
Panaflo L1A 80mm
Undervolted L1A 92mm (power supply second fan)
Vantec Stealth 80mm at 12V on CPU
Vantec Stealth 80mm at 5v on HDDs

After playing Medal of Honor: Spearhead for about an hour, I opened up the case and found I could not keep my fingers on the card for even five seconds.

I have the same issue with my Ti4200. Rise Of Nations, I get lots of "sparklies" and both sides of the sink are blazing hot. I have to turn the 120mm on my hard drive cage past 7V to get the sparklies to simmer down.

EDIT: this makes me think that I need more "sink" on my sink.
Maybe I could attach a few passive NB coolers onto my ZM80 with thermal epoxy...

I use a Leadtek GF4 Ti4200 with the ZM80 (not A - 30% smaller) cooler, and no problems noticed from March when I got them. I do notice that the retaining screws get loose over time though, this might be causing problems for some. I retighten every couple of months.

Yeah, my friend just did that with his 7500 AIW. Does a nice job.

Maybe I should try a panaflo in my enermax...maybe not...too hot?

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I replaced both Panaflos in my Enermax. The air coning out the back is very warm, and so is the air that comes out of the front (forced through by the undervolted 92mm L1A on the PSU's underside.) I didn't have to do any special wiring modifications to the Enermax to get the L1As to work. The bottom fan is already undervolted, so no special considerations are necessary as far as that goes. I think the supply will still last a long time, though it runs a good deal hotter than before. The rear fan in mine runs at full blast (or as much as can be expected from an L1A) because it's the only case exhaust fan. Your results may vary depending on what your case fan situation is.

I found the magic solution to my ZM80-A problems: I took some double-sided foam tape and some little strips of cardboard and made a decoupling fan mount for a Yate Loon D60SM-12 (sleeve bearing) 60mm fan that I have. It has very low CFM (about 12) and it spins nice and slow becuse it's 25mm thick like a regular 80mm fan. At 5 volts, it's the only 60mm case fan that I know of that is actually silent. It doesn;t provide enough airflow to cool a CPU, but when placed only about 1/2 cm above the top heatsink on the improvised shock mounts, it blows the heat away quite nicely, creating a bubble of very warm air around the Zalman. Now I don;t have to worry any longer about how well the heat is being dissipated because the cooling is active. On the shock mounts, the fan does not transfer any vibration to the heatsink, and it is truly silent.

The main problem with the Zalman 123 bracket and fan is the fact that it does vibrate a bit, causing a little more noise that I prefer.

But during summer it's fine by me - I'd rather have a bit more noise than a dead computer.

Plus it's drowned out by the fan in my window...

Should I mod that too?

@POLIST8: Mine is attached by some double-sided foam tape and little strips of cardboard. It does a very good job of isolating the fan and preventing the vibrations from being transmitted to the heatsink. A 60mm Panaflo should work well at something like 5 volts. Very little airflow is actually necessary to generate the necessary cooling effect.

@miker: Just add airflow. A 60mm fan running very slowly is all that it takes. I don't know if the NV25 (GeForce 4ti) core runs hotter than the R300 core (9500, 9700) but from what I hear it certainly seems that way.

Rory B. The Funk's on me.