Hi guys

Just thought I would share a traumatic experience with you all. Now hopefully resolved. I have read these forums for a long time and found them quite helpful.

I have an Antec Solo system with a noctua 92mm intake and 120mm exhaust. Previously, I had the a Powercolor radeon HD 5770 running with the stock cooler. Recently after about 6 months of running quite well, the fan had become a bit louder, so I tried to install my Accelero S1 Rev 2 on it.

Due to the card design I didn't have to mod the Accelero, however the spacers don't quite fit the 5770 as previously noted in these forums. I decided to use the stock spacers from the card. I didn't realise however that these were in fact Too Small until I screwed them down. I realised that the foot of the accelero had crushed some of the components near the heatsink mounting standoff holes.

The system did not POST. Switched back to the stock cooler, still no POST.

I had to order a new card. I chose the silent cell as I thought I couldnt go through risking another failed mod.

THE GIGABYTE SILENT CELL 5770 IS TOO LONG FOR THE ANTEC SOLO.

Probably by about 3mm.

The main issue is that the side closest to the motherboard caught on the drive bay cage, and that it sat flush on the part of the heatsink touching the drive cage farthest from the motherboard.

Other people have had similar problems with the solo and cut the drive cage. It's quite sturdy steel, and I dont have the tools for this.

So to fix it I did the following:
1. The part farthest from the motherboard was on a heatpipe held in by the aluminium frame of the silent cell . I snipped the aluminium frame and bent the heatpipe so that it sat a little back from the drive cage.

2. The part closest to the motherboard needed trimming back. I used a set of nippers to trim about a 8mm-10mm square section of the heatsink off. This also required cutting through the aluminium frame. Tough going.

After all that, seems to work.

Obviously every system is pretty different, but the temps are now about 38-40C on the GPU core with 2 screens running on Win7 desktop, and stabilises about the 66C mark on Furmark.

I can't post an image as i dont have sufficient privileges yet.

Hope this helps somebody else

djhk[/img]

damn. so maybe I shouldnt even try to put on the S1 this weekend.

I could always sand down the little white spacers a smidge. Currently, my L2 pro is working fine but not in the realm of S1 at all.

thx so much for the heads up, I was going to try put a 5770 silent cell in my solo as well. looks like i'll just wait for the 5750 silent cell now (still no sign in NZ yet )

I've never bothered with the spacers, and haven't had a problem with the last three cards it's been on. Just take due care when installing the heatsink. Don't over-tighten it.

Oh man, that silent cell 5770 was what i had my heart set on. Do you think you could show us some pictures of what you had to do with the case to make it fit?

I have a dremel and am not afraid to use it!

thanks!

Hi guys

Thankful this helped somebody. I have built every PC I've owned since the Athlon Thunderbird with no casualties until now. How embarassing a little GPU heatsink swap totally owned me.

You will see from other posts that the spacers are about 1mm or so too thick. In retrospect what I should have done was remove the L1 first, measure the spacer distance, then sand them down. Unfortunately the paper over the thermal paste on the S1 fell off and in dealing with this I forgot to check the spacers.

The main problem is that the S1 has 2 sets of mounting holes - my 5770 used the inner ones. The outer ones flare out diagonally for a further 5-6mm or so. This is what probably assassinated my card - either that or ESD I guess.

Regarding the silent cell, I can't post any pictures (didn't take any at the time but remember quite clearly what you have to do), however if you want to pm me your email addresses I can send you a schematic-type drawing of what was required to fit it into the solo.


djhk
edit: Grammar

Hey guys, I also put a 5770 Silent cell into a solo last week. It is a very tight fit but I found that no modification was required to fit the card in.

As the card currently sits, the top part of the gpu heatsink that is furthest away from the motherboard does make contact with the case. However on the motherboard side I found there was a 2-3mm clearance between the card and the harddrive cage. I did a couple of small mods that when I tested turned out to be useless...the card ended up just slotting in. I might throw up some pictures later this week.

If you wanted to, a pair of tin-snips would be sufficient to mod the case/card where apppropriate to give a bit more space as described by djhk. Although its handy I think a dremel is a bit of overkill.

Summary: to those who are considering the card, it is a tight fit, but i found it was possible to fit without modding, and the mods to give it a bit more space are very easy to do.

i wonder whether that is manufacture variance

yeah i dunno...variance in the card or case seems unlikely. Could a different motherboard possibly cause a difference?

Wow, pretty impressive temps. (Unless you have some extremely good airflow.)

Now I'm tempted to get one. What are the exact dimensions? I'm not worried about the length for my case, but the width -the part towards the side panel- will be crucial. I'm guessing it must be around 16cm, since it looks about 3/2 the width of the "standard" part (the part without heat sink). If someone can post a picture or diagram it would be great. (If you post a picture please show exactly from where to where you measured.)

So I found a good looking review (in German) where they have some dimensions for the 5770 Silent Cell.
http://ht4u.net/reviews/2010/gigabyte_radeon_hd_5770_passiv_silent_cell/index2.php
If I understood that right the 17.2 cm is including the metal part where the DVI etc. connections are (so not counting that metal part it should be about 15.2 cm).

They also tried mounting a fan on it, so check it out.

I can join in on the guys who have installed a Gigabyte silent cell hd5770 into an antec solo. However my cabinet is called 'designer 500' but it's just like the antec solo but in white. I had to shuffle around cables and my hdds in order to get it right. it looks like shit now inside my computer but whatever.

Must say it was a really tight fit but it worked. i'm running wow in ultra settings with like 100 fps+ and SC2 with like 60+ after one hour it was up to 46 degrees celsius which is a lot better than my old radeon 1950xt that ran a stable 80 degrees w/o load
this card is as awesome as it looks.

i cant really enjoy the silence because there's a storm outside sounding like my old graphics card ._.

Anyways. the card fits. but it's really tight.

Thanks for the link, ermi !

Ramon

Hey peoples who have put the Silent Cell 5770 in their antec Solos, can you pleeeeeaaassseee post some pictures? I am running a 5.25 hard drive silencer suspended vertically in my hard drive slots. It takes all the slots up and I am trying to figure out if the card would fit in there.


so any pictures would be VERY welcomed and requested.


thanks!

pretty please?


bump

Thanks to original poster I'm going to build one and I hope I get the pic up next week or so.

I had a similar experience a few years ago with a Geforce 6600GT AGP and a Zalman VF700 (posted here somewhere). I didn't install the spacers properly and busted off a few transistors in the process.

Luckily I was able to fix the damage with a soldering iron, needles, and couple erasers (no kidding, but the last two were just implements, not part of the end product).

It is a tight fit, but I was afraid it would be worse. You have to insert it diagonally ports-side in right place, then carefully turn it into position.

It helped to move the card down as soon as the angle allowed.

Pic attached.

Hello irve,

I am considering buying a 5770 Silent Cell for my Antec Solo. Thanks for your pictures about it.

Some questions:

- Did you need to mod the drive bays (like cutting or dremelling a bit)?
- Do the 5770 touch any metal parts of the drive cage?
- How exactly did you slot it in position?

Thanks a lot for your information.

partimers