I have a Palit GTX 570 Sonic, and although its a great card, the noise is unbearable when playing a game. They sound like two mini vacuum cleaners.



My first instinct was to replace the entire HSF combo with something like the AC Accelero XTREME Plus, until I realized that since the Palit 570 is a non reference design, getting the Arctic Cooling unit to fit would either be very difficult or impossible.

While looking for a solution, I stumbled upon a review of my card where the HSF was completely disassembled:






It then dawned on me, why not simply reuse the existing heatsink as its quite large and of high quality, and simply replace the annoying fans instead? I don't see why this wouldn't work. While the Palit heatsink isn't quite as large as the Accelero Plus, it should still be adequate. I took my card apart and made some measurements. I could easily fit 2 x 92mm fans on the heatsink. The video card has 2 PWM fan headers where I can connect the fans directly. All I would need to do is to change the connectors on the new fans. I think i'm going to opt for AC F9 92mm PWM fans, which should be decently quiet and still provide enough cooling.

So my question is, is there anything I need to be on the look out for? Does this seem like a reasonable plan? And most importantly, what would be the best way to "mount" these 2 fans onto the heatsink/card? I mean, i'm sure I could use something as quick and painless as rubber bands to hold them on, but i'm afraid that the excessive heat from the card would either melt the rubber or dry them out and cause them to snap prematurely. Any other ideas?

With a seemingly quality heatsink like that already on there I'd much prefer to go the same route myself. Tougher material like cable ties or leftover wire cables would do the job well. As the plastic shroud can probably not be kept on you'll loose most of that direct exhaust effect, but that might on the other hand be part of why it sounds so bad. Just be aware that a bit more heat will have to be vented from the case than before.

Thanks for the advice mkk. I had completely forgotten about zip ties. I found some and they should do the job nicely.

Now that I think of it, the hardest part of this project will be to change the connector on the AC F9 fans to the one used on the default fans, as they are not the standard type motherboard PWM connector. I don't mind soldering, but the original fans do NOT have color coded wiring, they are all white. How can I be sure i'm wiring the F9 fans correctly to the video card? Can I simply assume its the default order of :

Pin 1 Gnd black
Pin 2 12V yellow
Pin 3 (tach) sense green
Pin 4 (PWM) control blue

or would there be a better way to determine the wiring?

Hi, I have F9 PWM fans on my video card and love them!
See here.

For the fan I just removed the existing plastic surround to leave the bare pins, bent them out slightly as the new fan header is wider and jamed it on!





Hasn't fallen off yet. One fan rpm signal goes to the card and is seen in GPU-Z and the other goes to the motherboard and can be seen in Speedfan. The videocard has much finer control and reporting of fan speed than the motherboard.

Think the order is the same, I might have used a multimeter before hand to check which was end was 12v to get it the right way round but don't think you'd damage the fan even if plugged in wrong!
Idle 625 rpm at 25% (mod'd BIOS) and climb around 75°C GPU temp. With my improved case ventilation even running folding@home on the GPU all day they're not increasing above idle speed!

Regards, Seb

Thanks Sebrad! How is the sound profile of the two F9's? Mines should be here in a few days.

Also, i'm not sure your "jam the fan header on" trick will work as well for me. My video card has 2 fan headers directly next to each other. I'm pretty sure that the F9's plug would be too large to have them side by side like that. Hopefully the order is the same.

Hi, I think the F9 fans are the best of the Arctic Cooling F series and very nice fans. Even at full speed 1800rpm there is only air flow noise and not especially unpleasant at that.

Gelid adapter cable.
The AC fans have built-in "PWM Sharing" so can plug both in to the one header.
Edit: cheap too!

Or make one up maybe!

Seb

Just wanted to make an update with my progress



Here is the video card with the stock fans and shroud removed. Its quite nice and hefty, and it has the added bonus of including the baseplate which helps to cool the RAM and VRM's.




Here is the card with the fans attached. I used zip ties to keep them secured and they hold nicely. I used Rebrad's advice of simply removing the plastic header for the fans, and "brute forcing" on the ones from the AC fans. I had to bend the pins slightly but overall they fit perfectly.

So how do they sound? In a word, wonderful. I cannot hear them over the Scythe case fans, even at 100% speed! Since they are using the fans headers on the GTX570, I can both view and control them using MSI afterburner which is a huge bonus. They run at default 30% speed while idle, and spin up to anywhere between 50-100% during gaming.

The only bit of disappointment is that the new fans don't cool any better than the old ones. As a matter of fact, the card actually runs hotter than the stock fans. I feel this may be due to the somewhat large chuck of heatsink that isn't getting any cooling to the right side of the card, but its hard to tell. Still, its within normal limits, hitting about 88C on heavy gaming. Perhaps I should have gotten 2x 120mm fans which would have done a better job of covering the entire heatsink.

This sounds exactly like what I think I need to do.

I just bought an ASUS GTX 570 DirectCU II card, and the fans are horrible, even when it's idling.

I figure I'm going to try to replace them with two 120 mm Noctua fans, but I need to know if the plastic "shielding" is removable on this card, but I've been unable to find anything about how easy it is to disassemble these DirectCU II coolers.

I'm half tempted to return the card right now, but the cooler seems quite all right, so if I can successfully install two new fans and control them via the card, then I'll probably go for that.

Has anyone got any idea?

I'm in the EXACT same situation!
I have just mounted the card, after cutting up my harddrive cage in my Antec Solo a bit to be able to actually fit the card.

Bought the card yesterday, after reading review after review (swedish product price running site) with (probably deaf gamers) proclaiming their love over how quiet the card is, in both idle ('inaudible') and load.

Well - it sounds frickin' awful! I've slowed down the fans to 10% (lowest possible via MSI Afterburner). For me it's unbearable at idle on 10%. When gaming, I tried using my Sennheiser HD280 pro closed headphones, and between cutscenes in BF - Bad Company 2 my ears instantly 'land' on the stupid fan noise. Set it to go to ~20% fan speed during load and that's actually annoying despite playing loud shooter games.

Really regretting this buy, but I realize as well that there's not much to choose from when you want performance and low noise.

If there's an easy way to remove the fans and replace with ones that doesn't suck ass I'd love to do that. Not sure where to start though.

Well, company is comfort.

Have you removed it and looked at it yet?

Hi, for replacement coolers I would take a look at:
Accelero xtreme plus II
Thermalright Shaman

The Accelero claims GTX570 compatability and I've seen threads people talking about fitting the Shaman sucessfully to GTX570.
"doveman" has a thread about fitting the Accelero to HD6950, not the right card but they might offer insight to the coolers potential.

Regards, Seb

Right, it's obviously possible to get it off, the thing is: how, and is it doable without damaging it; and: what kind of connections are we talking about on the board? Is it comparable to the board the OP has?

The thing is, the cooler itself is very good. I see no need to replace it, if I can simply replace the fans. Removing the whole cooler is a lot more work, and the threads I've seen talking about those coolers specifically has included posts saying that it was hard, and mods were needed.

Rotten, check here:
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews ... tcu2/2.htm

It seems it's quite doable to remove the cooler. I'm more skeptical when it comes to the fans, not sure what to do about them.

Since this beast of a card takes up 3 slots, it makes me wonder if it would work the same when fitting an Accelero or Shaman. First step it so investigate if it's possible to return it I suppose.

The fans seem to be stuck in the plastic chassis, so I don't see much of a problem there. It's not like I'm about to use the chassis in any case.

So next we gotta find some way to connect 'good' fans to those types of connectors, right?

See my comments at top of thread about this adapter?
Possibly with this Y cable?
Can also see the low tech solution I used!

I might be wrong but I think if want really quiet operation you will need a bigger/better heat sink.
For somewhat quiet(er) then yes better/slower fans and maybe less aggressive cooling profile will be sufficient.
Seb

Thanks for the links.

Well the current heatsink is quite beefy, and I'm getting 46 degrees celcius idle with 10% fan speed, ~68 degrees during gaming and almost 20% fan speed. So it seems to be doing quite a good job considering my case is pretty low in airflow.

I'm sitting comfortably at 30 degrees at well below 10%

The auto speed actually lowers the fan speed to well below what Afterburner can manage, so it's not so much the air flow or the fins cutting air that makes the noise, it's the ball bearings. They just sound like horrible quality fans. Panning from one frequency to up to a second, then down again, constantly. It sounds horrible.

30, that's very low compared to my temps, do you have good airflow in your case?

Due to my temps my 'auto' mode runs around 20%. Sounds like a motorcycle somewhere nearby.

That might be plain wrong, actually. Maybe your card is defective (cooler not having full contact with GPU maybe?)

My airflow is OK, but I wouldn't say it's stellar (it's a silent system, after all, all I can hear is the graphics card).

At boot it's at under 10%, but after some ordinary use right now, I see that it's up at 11% according to Afterburner.

Still, it's not silent, by any measure, sadly. I'm really not sure what I am to do about this.

I went and got another one. The same card.

It does not have the same irritating modulating low frequency sound. This one has a constant low frequency sound.

It's better, though. The fans seem to work OK.

It even reports lower temperatures at idle (probably not actual variations, though). This one stays at 29 degrees idle, sub 10% fan speed.

So, I'll return the other card, and live with this one until I can find a solution with the fans. Good luck to you tackle, I hope you find a solution.

I'll be sure to post back here whenever I get around to replacing the cooler or fans, though. Right now I'm thinking that I'll go for getting two 120 mm Noctua fans and another external fan controller and put them on the DirectCU II cooler. I'm pretty sure that would be an alright setup.

Two 120mm fans and a manual fan controller is what I did with my DirectCUII (an HD6950), it works very well: No noise and about the same temps as with the stock fans. Here'a picture.

I used a few pieces of string to tie the 120mm fans to the case, hammock-style. (I was a bit concerned about the added weight on the PCIe slot if I were to strap them on the card itself.)
It's very simple: If you have a screwdriver, two 120mm fans and a piece of string you can rig it up in half an hour. (Most of that time spent figuring out how to remove the shroud from the card.)

You don't get automatic fan speed regulation this way, but I haven't missed it - haven't had to turn up the fans yet.

Does that card use the exact same cooler?

If so, can you share how you got the plastic casing off?

They look very similar judging from pictures, so I guess it's the same mounting mechanism.

You just loosen the screws. Finding the last screw took me a while: The red stripes in the middle of the casing, between the two fans, is a piece of metal foil that is glued on. The last screw is under it.

Tried to return the card - no go at my supplier due to opened package.
Modding is the only option now.

Faustus is right about the screws.
I've dismantled the whole card basically, in this manner:

1. Remove the whole cooler by unscrewing the four screws around the GPU core. You have to wiggle it carefully for a bit for the cooling paste to release its sticky grip.

2. To remove the plastic shroud + fans (and the metal frame it's on) you remove two screws on each end of the heatsink, on the short sides. No biggie, but I had to use a screwdriver to 'unbend' one of the heatsink fins that was somehow holding it all together even without the screws. After that, the plastic shroud came off.

3. I removed the plastic shroud from the fans and the metal frame by removing the small blacks screws on the plastic. 2 on each long side, then 3 larger versions under each set of black/red metal decorations on top of the shroud.

Seems like the two fans are regular PWM fans that has those 4-pin connectors you see on GPU's. So no surprise there. They are both connecting to a Y-cable that goes into a 5-pin connector which is the one actually connected to the card itself.

Here's a badly lit pic of the result (at least I took the effort to clean off the old thermal paste while at it):


I'm thinking about getting two Arctic Cooling F9 PWM fans, and two of these:
http://www.gelidsolutions.com/products/ ... d=60&tab=2
(thanks for tip SebRad)

Problem is, I can easily get the fans in a day or two from local suppliers but the Gelid cable is a lot harder to come by. Fastest I can do is send by airmail from 'quietpc.com' which may take up to 21 days. Better than nothing I suppose, and I can use the card in vacuum cleaner mode until then I suppose.


Edit:
I've been doing some reading in this thread here:
http://www.overclock.net/nvidia-cooling ... 70-hd.html
..and the DVI cap they mention there is present on this card as well (Asus GTX570 DirectCU) but there are a few millimeters of clearance now that I've measured it 'naked'. We need 46 mm, and I measure 48 mm available.

So, a Thermalright Shaman seems like a possible solution. I have no idea what the connector on the fan for the Shaman looks like though. Anyone?
Also, I've read about some nasty clicking noise from that fan, so that doesn't sound promising. The cooler itself though seems to perform awesomely. I have yet to figure out if you need to fit that extra weird vertical 90 degree cooler (can't explain it better). Something like this: http://www.inet.se/artikel/5321634/ther ... 5-heatsink

After reassembling the card I experience it to be less annoying than before, but only to a very small degree. Say, 3% less annoying.

So, the new plan is:

- Wait for "regular PWM-fan connector > GPU PWM fan connector" cables to arrive
- Wait for 2 Arctic Cooling F9 fans to arrive (just ordered)
- When arrived, remove old fans and put on new fans, zip tie or whatever.

Until then, await Battlefield 3.

I'm currently waiting for my fan controller to arrive. Already have a couple of 120 mm Noctua fans ready.

Do you think 120mm fans would be better for my scenario as well?

Are you keeping the original heatsink?
Also what fan controller are you going to use?