SPCR

Has anyone compared the load levels of these vs a card with an Arctic Accelero Xtreme III? (one of the quietest active coolers)

I had a card with one, but I switched to Team Green because I wanted a G-Sync monitor, so I got a stock 770 a while ago.
Now, I'm kind of torn between getting one of these or tracking down another (no longer made and somewhat rare) Arctic Accelero.


I would get a IV, but they made some really odd design decisions with that... no way will that monster fit in my case with the giant backplate.

It will almost certainly be louder with the stock cooler as the heatsink is far smaller which will require more airflow from what are probably lower quality fans.

gsilver wrote:I'm kind of torn between getting one of these or tracking down another (no longer made and somewhat rare) Arctic Accelero.

The Accelero S1 Plus is still in production and advertised on Arctic's site. With a 120mm fan or 2 it might work for a GTX 970.

There are other cheaper options. If you don't like the fans on the stock heatsink, just remove the fans and the nasty shroud and cable tie a pair of 120mm fans to it running at 5V.

gsilver wrote:Has anyone compared the load levels of these vs a card with an Arctic Accelero Xtreme III? (one of the quietest active coolers)

I had a card with one, but I switched to Team Green because I wanted a G-Sync monitor, so I got a stock 770 a while ago.
Now, I'm kind of torn between getting one of these or tracking down another (no longer made and somewhat rare) Arctic Accelero.


I would get a IV, but they made some really odd design decisions with that... no way will that monster fit in my case with the giant backplate.

I dont think its worth it, unless the load niose is too noticeble, but the TechPowerUp review places it at very low noise, so to me its not worth it. If you check my build on my signature you will see the accelero III and IV tested on PWM fan headers, and you cant turn the off, well the III maybe if the card is design to go into less than 10% pwm signal, but still its a big if, i wasnt even able to take them lower than 1100rpms under the cards vbios nor with software, so ther could be limitations, and even then achieving as low as a semipassive... i doubt it. I would go with Asus or MSI with their own coolers, seems like very good offering for the money and noise wise seems the best.

Personally what i would do is keep them as it is, if the fans are noisy on load, or if they become noisy over time, since the card works passive until 65C, then there is very little cooling needed, so i would remove the shroud, and run a couple of Scythe Gentle Typhoon 120mm Case Fan - 500 RPM, 5 dBA, 17.7cfm

Mine arrived today.
Seems like it spins up at 66 C.
Played some Dark Souls 2, where it starts out at 58 C and slowly increases to 66, fan goes up to 500-800 rpm, temp decreases down toward 58 again, fan stops. Repeat forever after. 4-5 minute cycle.
At 800 rpm I cant really hear it. Guess I'll need something more GPU hungry than Dark Souls 2 to push the card.

Glad you can't really hear it at 800rpm - I think the on/off/on cycle would be annoying otherwise. Hopefull, there's some user hysteresis adjustment.

Shadout wrote:At 800 rpm I cant really hear it. Guess I'll need something more GPU hungry than Dark Souls 2 to push the card.

You might give a try to a gaming benchmark, like Unigine, and eventually report us, if you don't mind.

CA_Steve wrote:Glad you can't really hear it at 800rpm - I think the on/off/on cycle would be annoying otherwise. Hopefull, there's some user hysteresis adjustment.

Yeah, it really could.
I'm going to play around with a custom fan profile later to see if the ups/downs can be made more consistent. As long as its pretty much inaudible it is a non-issue, but lots of changes in noise level could easily be more annoying than a constant low noise.

You might give a try to a gaming benchmark, like Unigine, and eventually report us, if you don't mind.

Will give it a try.

During Unigine Valley temps rose to 73 C max. 1380 RPM max. Since it was a constant load on the GPU there was of course no fan speed up/down here.
Above 1200 RPM the fans started to be quite audible (even if they are likely still a lot quieter than a standard card -and quieter than my old car during heavy load, which was this card http://www.silentpcreview.com/Asus_AH68 ... U_VGA_Card). The sound was actually a bit annoying - more so than the volume in itself - as if the whole GPU enclosure was vibrating. Will have to take a look at that later.
Would certainly prefer if the fans never rise above 1200 RPM in any real scenario.

The best way to test the card in worst-case scenarios would be during summer of course. My room temperature here is likely helping quite a bit. Can't see the room temperature right now but I would guess around 20-22 C.

Shadout wrote:Would certainly prefer if the fans never goes above 1200 RPM in any real scenario.

You might use Afterburner to limit the max speed (at least up to the throttling temp).

quest_for_silence wrote:

Shadout wrote:Would certainly prefer if the fans never goes above 1200 RPM in any real scenario.

You might use Afterburner to limit the max speed (at least up to the throttling temp).

Yeah, did that with my previous card. Right now I'm just seeing how the card performs without any adjustments.

So, went on to try a custom profile. Going to 800 RPM at 67 C (like it does normally). and 1100 RPM at 77 C (where it would before go to ~1350 RPM) and at 80+ C to 1350 RPM.
During Unigine it seemed to stabilize around 77-79 C, and switching between 800 RPM and 1100 RPM (due to the max temp being just around the 77 C threshold, which could probably be fixed with some more adjustments). 1100 RPM is fairly pleasant, without the 'vibration noise' I mentioned earlier. 800 RPM is optimal though.
That is 6 C higher than the default profile. I don't know if it might become a problem in warmer weather.

Any idea how high the temps can go and still be 100% safe?

Edit: Adjusted the profile, resulting in 76-77 C, at 880 RPM constantly during the run.

What i would do is try to find out the throttling temp, Nvidia gpu have a gpu boost, that they also have restricted via temp, when ever its reached the boost is lowered, and in some cases the base clocks as well. To what i seen in some, not sure on yours... its around 80C, so this would be my goal, but find out whats the temp where it cripples the boost. I have a couple of questions,

1) Can you use Afterburner to make the card always move the fans, like not have a passive stage?

2) Whats the lowest rpms you can set on afterburner or GPU tweak? i see 500rpm in some of your remarks is this the lowest?

3) I think you bought the Asus, but just wanted to make sure?

You can force the fans to always spin, but it is acting a little weird.
With the default profile the fan starts to spin at 32%, but to force the fan to start I had to set it at 36-38% - which is 770-870 RPM.
Changing to 34% => 650 RPM.
32% => 560 RPM
30% => Fan switches off.
Then after it turns off, if I go back to 32%-35% it does not start up again. At 36% it starts again.

So unless it can be forced to start earlier, it seems like 770 RPM might be minimum with a custom profile, even though it can go lower.
I guess maybe the standard profile is build around this start-up "issue" and simply feeds the fan more voltage to get it running and then slows it down.

It is the Asus Strix yeah.

Shadout wrote:Any idea how high the temps can go and still be 100% safe?

It's set by the power envelope (the "adjustable TDP"), AFAIK: on most of non-reference GM204, IIRC it is something around 91-93°C.

Shadout wrote:Adjusted the profile, resulting in 76-77 C, at 880 RPM constantly during the run.

Which is the minimum speed you could set (I mean, different from 0RPM)?

quest_for_silence wrote:

Shadout wrote:Any idea how high the temps can go and still be 100% safe?

It's set by the power envelope (the "adjustable TDP"), AFAIK: on most of non-reference GM204, IIRC it is something around 91-93°C.

Shadout wrote:Adjusted the profile, resulting in 76-77 C, at 880 RPM constantly during the run.

Which is the minimum speed you could set (I mean, different from 0RPM)?

Thanks.
See my previous post regarding minimum RPM. It varies a bit unfortunately.

quest_for_silence wrote:

Shadout wrote:Adjusted the profile, resulting in 76-77 C, at 880 RPM constantly during the run.

Which is the minimum speed you could set (I mean, different from 0RPM)?

I've just seen your figures: well, I would try to set a custom profile with a 38% minimum at about 15-20°C, then gently slowing down to 34°C before (to say) 30-35°C, stay costant up to the first seventies, then ramping up again but gently.

I can't make a fan curve in Afterburner with decreasing fan speeds at increasing temps. At least it gives me that message when I try

Shadout wrote:I can't make a fan curve in Afterburner with decreasing fan speeds at increasing temps. At least it gives me that message when I try

Too bad: there's the chance to manually edit the relevant .cfg file, as many cryptominers do (for overclocking purposes), but I can't help about.

I'm also upgrading from Asus Radeon HD 6850 with stock cooler, which is very quiet at idle but quite noisy when gaming. My Asus Strix 970 will probably arrive tomorrow. Time to start gaming again. :)

I'm a bit worried about the coil whine people have been complaining about, as only some seem to be affected. But I'm still guessing it'll be quieter than my old card.

Aneon wrote:I'm a bit worried about the coil whine people have been complaining about, as only some seem to be affected.

Hardly that may be caused by the card itself, or the relevant QC procedure: more likely it could be due to interaction with the PSU.

Can't hear any coil whine from mine, but it seems totally luck based. And maybe PSU based (mine is Corsair AX750)

That's good to hear. I have the exact same PSU as well

Seems MSI will be introdicing a cheaper 970, MSI Announces GeForce GTX 970 Gaming LE

Guys, don't forget that the Asus card uses one 8-bit connector for power. I missed that detail, only had 6-pin on my old, so have to go and buy one tomorrow. It's also a very big card, almost didn't fit in my case (Antec Nine Hundred Two V3) without removing hdd boxes.

So, this is a great card, the fans are very quiet compared to other stock fans, the most quiet I've owned. I don't notice the fans at all until about 30%, at 60 degrees C, and it's hard to push this card in normal gaming.

Using the Asus GPU Tweak tool it's a bit confusing if the fans turn off or not, because they're shown as on all the time between 0-30%, but I can't hear them. My guess is that they are turned off below 30% although the tool shows otherwise.

However, I have experienced some coil whine occasionally, which is my biggest annoyance. A high-pitched sound that I never heard before. This only occurs in certain situation, however.

The most striking sound was during the loading screen of the Nvidia FaceWorks demo:
http://www.nvidia.com/coolstuff/demos#! ... -rendering

During the loading screen, it whines like something is about to break, switching between different high pitched tones. But as soon as the demo starts, the sound disappears. Inside the demo, GPU usage is at 99%, temperature at 70 and fan speed at 45%. I hear the fans but no coil whine at all.

When playing Skyrim, GPU usage normally doesn't go past 60%, with 65 degree C and 35% fan, which is very nice and quiet. But when I open the settings menu by pressing ESC, I start to hear the isolated high-pitched sound again, and the GPU usage spike to 90%, although it's quieter than the FaceWorks demo.

It's also clearly heard during menu screens of other games such as The Witcher 2 and Euro Truck Simulator 2, but again not during gameplay.

Still haven't investigated the sound source to see if it's really coming from the GPU or not.

I have no knowledge of how this sound might be related to the PSU. Does anyone have any more information on this?

Aneon wrote:Still haven't investigated the sound source to see if it's really coming from the GPU or not.

Pinpointing the sound source is crucial.

Aneon wrote:I have no knowledge of how this sound might be related to the PSU. Does anyone have any more information on this?

It's a tricky issue: just as a very first starting point, look at the longest post in this thread: http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11859

Thanks for the info, Luca, I will read up on that.

Just tried to pinpoint the whine. It's hard to say if it's coming from the GPU or PSU, as they're so close together and the sound might be bouncing, but I'm leaning towards the GPU, especially as that's what introduced the problem. Seems to be coming from the bottom half of the case at least.

Did a short video of the sound from the start menus of The Witcher 2:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/242 ... .53.30.mp4

This has just one high-pitched tone, while in other situations, the tone seems to change depending on screen color. Tried to place the mobile microphone at different places, but did it pretty casually so it might be misleading. Will try to do it better later.

Aneon wrote:Will try to do it better later.

Well, it's hard to troubleshoot with every parts in the case: it'd be better to take apart the rig, and to put the PSU as far as you can from the GPU. Obviously, if it were possible.

Aneon wrote: Using the Asus GPU Tweak tool it's a bit confusing if the fans turn off or not, because they're shown as on all the time between 0-30%, but I can't hear them. My guess is that they are turned off below 30% although the tool shows otherwise.

Thats my experience at least, with the fans not turning on before 30%+ (the actual percentage seems to vary slightly)

However, I have experienced some coil whine occasionally, which is my biggest annoyance. A high-pitched sound that I never heard before. This only occurs in certain situation, however.

The most striking sound was during the loading screen of the Nvidia FaceWorks demo:
http://www.nvidia.com/coolstuff/demos#! ... -rendering

I have encountered the same noise on 3d menus, when the fps goes up like crazy ( order of hundreds or thousands)
Be sure to check the box in the nVidia control panel and enable Vsync - On .
So no more noise in menus