Fanless Gigabyte cards.... how effective?

Mar. · Post by **Mar.** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 12:32 pm

I am looking to build an Antec 3000B-based system that for cooling only relies on a Seasonic S12's exhaust fan, as well as a Yate Loon 120mm case fan.... the mobo will be an Abit AN8 2.0 (heatpipe cooled) and the CPU will be cooled by a Scythe Ninja relying on the case fan for airflow.

I haven't decided what video card to recommend (this system is for one of my roommates), but I am giving strong consideration to the Gigabyte fanless heatpipe cards... But would they be cooled well enough, considering the relatively low airflow of this proposed setup?

The card will be either the X800XL or the 6600GT, I am aware that the X800XL is a more powerful card but ATI's software has been pretty bad as of late (I have an AIW 9800Pro for myself). My roommate will probably not be willing to underclock/undervolt the card, and honestly I wouldn't recommend it to him, because it doesn't seem to help things most of the time. The fanless 6800GT would probably be the best choice, but they don't make a PCI Express version of it as far as I can tell.

He probably wouldn't be willing to switch to a non-stock heatsink, considering the bad experience he saw me have with a VGA Silencer (killed my card... my fault completely, I use the thing on my new card with no problems). If the fanless card would not work, are there any fanned cards that would be quieter than running the fanless card and adding a 120mm case fan to help cool it, but are still as powerful as an X800 or 6800? Fanless of course would be ideal, but if it can't be done, so be it.

madman2003 · Post by **madman2003** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 12:49 pm

I haven't had my 6600gt long enough to install an OS and stress it, but expect high temperatures. I've seen reports of 80-100 degrees celsius at heavy loads. Passive things always get warm/somwhat hot/hot. My phantom is quite warm/hot, i will do some things to improve airflow, but it is staying at a certain temperature. The 6600gt is warm when it idles, no where near my hot chipset(nforce4 with zalman NB47J). I'm just telling you that you (and/or your friend) should be prepared to make sure it gets some cooling and that it will always be hotter than actively cooled cards.

Mar. · Post by **Mar.** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 1:17 pm

Okay then, three questions:

a) Is a 120mm low-speed Yate Loon fan going to be enough to cool both the fanless X800XL, and an Athlon 64 3000+ with a Scythe Ninja?

b) And, will they both fit? I'm sure it will be close. Motherboard is an Abit AN8 2.0.

c) What would be a good quiet fanned card, should we choose not to use a fanless card?

madman2003 · Post by **madman2003** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 1:57 pm

I can only anser the third question, the best fanned card would probably be a fanless card with a 92 or 120mm nexus fan(or something similarly quiet) blowing on it. For instance gigabyte 6800gt has a fan with a similar heatsink as the passive 6800, but the thing is not supposed to be remotely quiet. (because of the small fan)

CGameProgrammer · Post by **CGameProgrammer** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 9:47 pm

Heatsinks are almost useless without steady airflow around all of the ridges, and there is very little airflow down where the VGA cards are, at least without a front case fan. However, only gentle airflow is needed to make them work, and work well.

Given the research I've done and reviews I've read, I decided to buy a fanless Gigabyte 6600GT with a Nexus 120mm fan on a Zalman BR-123 mounting bracket. All three components are in the mail but I should get them Tuesday. I'll let you know how it goes, if you want. I figure I'll run the fan at a constant 5V and it should be both quiet and effective.

I'm in the SLK3000-B, and my other fans are the S12-430 PSU fan, the Freezer 64 fan @ 5V, and the case exhaust fan which is currently stock (and noisy) but I'll be using another Nexus for that, again at 5V.

atomidude · Post by **atomidude** » Sun Jul 03, 2005 2:52 am

here's my system
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=19874
with everything on passive cooling inside, including the 6800. i've got a 120mm Aerocool Turbine blowing on the vga/cpu/chipset area at 750rpm.
the vga is idle high 40s, load bellow 70, all Celsius. i think that's more than reasonable, i've seen cards on noisy active cooling running much hotter than that.
close to 4,000 in 3dmak05, over 9,900 in 3dmark03, with some OC

good enough for me, can play anything at 1280X1024. using the card since september, never had a problem with it.

Mar. · Post by **Mar.** » Sun Jul 03, 2005 9:28 am

CGameProgrammer wrote:Heatsinks are almost useless without steady airflow around all of the ridges, and there is very little airflow down where the VGA cards are, at least without a front case fan. However, only gentle airflow is needed to make them work, and work well.

Given the research I've done and reviews I've read, I decided to buy a fanless Gigabyte 6600GT with a Nexus 120mm fan on a Zalman BR-123 mounting bracket. All three components are in the mail but I should get them Tuesday. I'll let you know how it goes, if you want. I figure I'll run the fan at a constant 5V and it should be both quiet and effective.

I'm in the SLK3000-B, and my other fans are the S12-430 PSU fan, the Freezer 64 fan @ 5V, and the case exhaust fan which is currently stock (and noisy) but I'll be using another Nexus for that, again at 5V.

That is what I was thinking. It looks like the heatsink on those Gigabyte cards would put it directly in the path of the 120mm exhaust fan, but I am thinking about blowing a 92mm or 120mm Yate Loon fan across it as well, using one of those Zalman fan brackets or something homemade.

atomidude: Nice system, but that wouldn't work for his because the Ninja heatsink needs air blowing over it, and also because there is no place for a side fan in the 3000B. Good ideas though.

Another question: Is the passive X800XL significantly hotter than the passive 6600GT?

Jaer · Post by **Jaer** » Sun Jul 03, 2005 10:23 am

As said above all the passive solution requires good airflow around the heatsink.

Atomidude: Looking at the post with your setup it seems like your VGA temperatures are from Speedfan. Those are way off in my experience, if you have the possibility have a look at the temperatures reported in the drivers. My guess would be that the 40C Speedfan temp will translate into a core reading around at least 60C in the driver.

/Jaer

Mar. · Post by **Mar.** » Sun Jul 03, 2005 11:11 am

Yes but, as we all know video cards are much more resilient than other components... For example, I would consider a 60C load temp to be a bit too high for a CPU... what would be a "safe" load temp for one of these video cards? Ignoring the fact that a hotter card heats the case more, which I'm sure will be a concern, if only a small one.

atomidude · Post by **atomidude** » Sun Jul 03, 2005 5:52 pm

Jaer, there's nothing wrong with vga temperatures in speedfan. i trust those readings, i also checked the drivers temps, they're the same. i also trust my fingers! idle the heatsink is not too hot, no way it would be 50 + 20 C as you suggested... and let me tell you, that passive cooling on the card is pretty effective, after a full load vga test the temperature drops within minutes!
the nvidia cores are safe up to 110C i think, not that i wanna see it so hot, but just saying we shouldn't worry if it's 70C or 80C under full load, that's all

Mar. · Post by **Mar.** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 7:13 am

I''m sure the temp sensor on the boards vary in accuracy; that's probably what you're seeing as being so far off in speedfan.

Mar. · Post by **Mar.** » Sat Jul 09, 2005 12:09 pm

bump.... still have some as-of-yet unanswered questions interspersed in my ramblings.

Gorsnak · Post by **Gorsnak** » Sat Jul 09, 2005 4:17 pm

I've got the fanless Gigabyte 6600GT. I'm using a single Nexus 120 at 7v as the sole exhaust (psu has seperate airflow), as seen here. I installed the card after the article was written, so you don't get to see pictures of it, just the case. The gpu idles around 60 and peaks in the mid-80s. The default setting for temp throttling in the nVidia software is 145C.

I don't know that I'd be happy with anything over 100, but it seems that they're pretty resilient units. Anyways, I'm perfectly happy with the performance of my card.

That said, there are reports that some of the Gigabyte cards have poor thermal interfaces between the sinks and the chips. There's a current thread called Experiences with a Gigabyte 6600GT Silentpipe where a guy took his apart and found little to no thermal past, etc.

cwl999 · Post by **cwl999** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 3:59 am

I've got the passive 6600gt in my Sonata with a 3.5 AMD into DFI LanParty UT SLI

The 120mm exhaust fan is hard wired to 5v, the CPU is being cooled by a
CNPS7700-AlCu attached to the m/b header, the NB fan has been made passive with a purple hedgehog.

During idle and normal use, the CPU doesn't need to spin (gotta love these AMDs) so the whole system is running passive from a 5v fan and the modded PSU.

Running games hasn't been a problem either. No stability probs with the system even during the hot spell (30+ degrees) a few weeks back.

Twigathy · Post by **Twigathy** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 3:38 pm

With This System I get temperatures of about 55C Idle and 75C load (rthdribl for an hour, also folding@home to max the CPU

). So yeah, I think the passive gigabytes are pretty damned good but remember that i had an extra fan getting air from outside the case and blowing across the heatsink.

dentaku · Post by **dentaku** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 4:24 pm

I have a Gigabyte fanless 6800 and it got way too hot without a fan with the case side on.
It wasn't that the card itself got too hot (it can withstand very high temperatures) it's just that it pumped so much hot air into the CPU and motherboard chipset area that my computer actually turned itself off and my Asus P4C800E motherboard started talking to me (it actually talks) saying that it had shut down my system.

SO: I opened the side of my case and used a Zalman bracket thing from my old P3 cooler and pointed a the 92mm fan at it. It made a huge difference.

I now have a 120mm Yate Loon spinning at 1100RPM pointed at it and it's idling at 46 C according the the Gigabyte software. It was about 2 degrees cooler with the faster 92mm fan but it made more noise.

I'm getting ready to mount one 120mm in the side panel of my case in line with the video card and another 120mm Yate Loon as an exhaust.
I'm just gonna have to modify my case because it's not wide enough to fit an 120mm exhaust.

Gorsnak · Post by **Gorsnak** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 12:02 am

dentaku wrote:It wasn't that the card itself got too hot (it can withstand very high temperatures) it's just that it pumped so much hot air into the CPU and motherboard chipset area that my computer actually turned itself off

Remember that a passively cooled 6800 doesn't dump any more heat into your case than an actively cooled one does. They're both dissipating exactly the same number of watts in heat. The active card just stirs the air in the vicinity of the card around a bit. If you don't mind my suggesting, I'd look at your overall case airflow situation - it's possible you wouldn't need the fan pointed at the 6800 at all with better case airflow - which might not be an issue of a larger exhaust fan, either, but could be congested intakes, etc. Not knowing anything about your system I couldn't say. Just a thought.

Mar. · Post by **Mar.** » Sat Jul 23, 2005 12:52 am

Anyway, here's the plan (haven't actually built the system yet)...

1. Get the fanless X800XL... ATI's crappy software notwithstanding, it's simply a better value than the 6600GT, and the fanless ones cost about the same as the fanned ones anyway.

2. Since it is highly unlikely that the card could actually get hot enough to damage something when not doing GPU-intensive work, try running it fanless, relying on the 120mm case exhaust fan for airflow. If temps are good, try some games, and if temps stay below about 85C for the card and 50C for the CPU, that's fine. A little leeway on those temps is likely.

3. If it gets too hot, or heats up the CPU (939 3700+, cooled by a Scythe Ninja) add a 120mm fan *somewhere*. Haven't decided where yet, and this will probably take some trial and error anyway.

4. If that doesn't work, take apart the heatsink and re-apply the notoriously bad application of thermal paste. If it is STILL too hot, it is unlikely a fanless cooling setup will work at all. If this is the case, throw an ATI Silencer 5 rev.2 on there.

5. If somehow, the ATI Silencer doesn't provide enough cooling, put it all back together and RMA the card and cooler, because something is wrong.

Any thoughts?

dentaku · Post by **dentaku** » Sun Jul 24, 2005 6:33 am

Gorsnak wrote:
dentaku wrote:It wasn't that the card itself got too hot (it can withstand very high temperatures) it's just that it pumped so much hot air into the CPU and motherboard chipset area that my computer actually turned itself off
Remember that a passively cooled 6800 doesn't dump any more heat into your case than an actively cooled one does. They're both dissipating exactly the same number of watts in heat. The active card just stirs the air in the vicinity of the card around a bit. If you don't mind my suggesting, I'd look at your overall case airflow situation - it's possible you wouldn't need the fan pointed at the 6800 at all with better case airflow - which might not be an issue of a larger exhaust fan, either, but could be congested intakes, etc. Not knowing anything about your system I couldn't say. Just a thought.

Ya, I see what you mean, it's just that I had NO case fans at all when this happened. I had no case airflow at all

"Stirring up" the air was all that I needed to avoid this extremely hot spot inside my computer. Of course opening the side was the most important thing when I'm not runnnig the card hard, but when I am, the fan helps allot.

I'm planning to use one of my 120mm Yate Loons as an input and the other as a rear exhaust (which happens to be right above the AGP card) so that's perfect. My biggest problem is that my case is about a mm too narrow to fit a 120mm rear exhaust. I guess I'll just have to trim something or bend something a bit.

I could also take my drive cage and place it on the floor of my case and attach the intake fan where the drives used to be and open up one of the 3.5" slot covers to let more air in. This would push air across the heatsink and out the back.

I dunno. I've got lots of ideas I could try.