Safe to keep my Vapor-X 5750 @ 20% fan speed?

They make noise, too.

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sakraycore
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Safe to keep my Vapor-X 5750 @ 20% fan speed?

Post by sakraycore » Mon Mar 01, 2010 12:33 pm

How would you know if it is safe to keep a video card at a certain fan speed?

flinx
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Re: Safe to keep my Vapor-X 5750 @ 20% fan speed?

Post by flinx » Mon Mar 01, 2010 12:42 pm

sakraycore wrote:How would you know if it is safe to keep a video card at a certain fan speed?
20% is the fan speed used on reference card for idle temperatures. The bios is programmed so that once a certain temperature is reached, the fan speed will slowly begin to ramp.

So unless you screw around with the fan speed and manually override it to 20% so it won't ramp up, you should be fine.

bradyapba
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Post by bradyapba » Mon Mar 01, 2010 1:41 pm

you can also download gpu-z, and have it running in the background, while you game, etc, and have it log stats to a file.

Then you can check your fan speeds and temps, to see whats going on.

maalitehdas
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Post by maalitehdas » Mon Mar 01, 2010 1:49 pm

Video cards themselves can handle quite a lot of heat, some I've heard have run nicely even at 145C. I suppose it's pretty rare to overheat a GPU if there's any fan spinning at any speed towards it. What should be considered, however, is that the GPU heat get's out of the case as directly as possible. If it's flowing / emitting heat to other components, their cooling can become another issue. Reducing a GPU fan speed might ramp up other fans in your case - and in worst case you might end up with a noisier system. Unfortunately most ATX cases doesn't have an exhaust vent for GPU heat. My solution was to use free card slots behind the case before, nowadays I have a very low power GPU with reasonable temperatures even without any fans. But shortly: It should be safe to run a GPU fan at 20%. It's good to let it ramp up when needed, so don't lock it for that level. If you do decide to lock the speed, please check your other temperatures and listen to your other fans too.

Nice tool to read temperature sensors is realtemp. Speedfan works also but not with all motherboards. Everest is very nice program too and have a lot of other system information, but it's free for evaluation period only.

rocketJeff
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Post by rocketJeff » Mon Mar 01, 2010 8:59 pm

I like using Furmark as a stress tester and gpu temperature monitor. Furmark 'burning' mode is as more stressful than most other applications so it's 'worst case' scenario. Furmark makes a really nice temp vs time plot as you stress test.

I force my Sapphire 5770 egg-shaped cooler to be at 20% at all time. The card idles at 30C and furmark load to 75C. 75C is hot, but still well within the limits of the card. During games like dragon age, the card stays around 55C.

Potenza
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Post by Potenza » Sun Mar 14, 2010 5:12 pm

I've got a fresh HD 5750 Vapor-X in my new rig and I set the fan speed to 20% as well. Now it is as good as silent, but before I leave it at 20% I will let Furmark have a run. If I do so, I'll post the results!

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Post by CA_Steve » Sun Mar 14, 2010 9:04 pm

rocketJeff wrote:I like using Furmark as a stress tester and gpu temperature monitor. Furmark 'burning' mode is as more stressful than most other applications so it's 'worst case' scenario. Furmark makes a really nice temp vs time plot as you stress test.

I force my Sapphire 5770 egg-shaped cooler to be at 20% at all time. The card idles at 30C and furmark load to 75C. 75C is hot, but still well within the limits of the card. During games like dragon age, the card stays around 55C.
+1. I did the same thing.

Potenza
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Post by Potenza » Sat Mar 27, 2010 2:33 pm

I did some extra 'testing' as well, and these vapor-X coolers are truly excellent performers. I played Assassins Creed for several hours today (I'm no real gamer, I was exploring Jeruzalem and Acre because I'm a history teacher who tries to find exciting ways to teach children...) and the results were very nice.

I set the fan speed to 25% because it makes no difference with 20% in terms of noise, but provides a bit more cooling. Before I started playing the game (1650x1050, everything setting on high) my card was a bit over 30°C. After several hours of intense load because of the game the card was somewhere between 55 and 60°C.

Excellent result, I say. Well done Sapphire!

chode
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Post by chode » Sat Mar 27, 2010 8:22 pm

Potenza wrote:I did some extra 'testing' as well, and these vapor-X coolers are truly excellent performers. I played Assassins Creed for several hours today (I'm no real gamer, I was exploring Jeruzalem and Acre because I'm a history teacher who tries to find exciting ways to teach children...) and the results were very nice.

I set the fan speed to 25% because it makes no difference with 20% in terms of noise, but provides a bit more cooling. Before I started playing the game (1650x1050, everything setting on high) my card was a bit over 30°C. After several hours of intense load because of the game the card was somewhere between 55 and 60°C.

Excellent result, I say. Well done Sapphire!
Is it still the loudest thing in your system? Especially at load? I'm close to getting one of these video cards and I'm deciding between the vapor-x, or a regular 5870 and buying an aftermarket cooler.

Potenza
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Post by Potenza » Sun Mar 28, 2010 5:58 am

No, it's not the loudest part, my CPU cooler is (Nexus XiR-2300). But that cooler was an obvious mistake, it will be replaced with a Xigmatek S1283 with an (inaudible) Nexus 120mm fan at 7V. Until then I can't tell for sure, but I must admit the Vapor-X cooler is NOT silent at 25%. It's very quiet though, so far I don't think it's annoying or very notable. With some extra case isolation you might do away with those last bits of noise as well.

I'm planning to suspend my HD (Western Digital Black Caviar 500GB). I haven't found the right materials, but until then the GPU and the HD are close calls in terms of noise (apart from the rather noisy CPU cooler). I must add that when you change the fan speed through CCC the PWM function is disabled. The fan on my HD5750 Vapor-X runs all the time at 25% - which makes the temperatures I posted very impressive in my opinion. If you'd keep the PWM function the fan does 50% at idle, which is noisy. This also means the fan would become rather loud at load - but if you go back to the temperatures I reported with the fan set at 25% I don't think this should bother you. A constant fanspeed between 20% and 30% combines great cooling with little noise, I say.

All together, it's a very efficient and almost (!) silent cooler if you manually adjust the fan. If all the other parts of your rig are as good as silent though, it might very well be the noisiest part.

sakraycore
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Post by sakraycore » Sun Mar 28, 2010 7:33 am

You can look into MSI afterburner which lets you define something like 20% at idle, and then slow rise after 40C or something.

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