Best silent 9600GT!

willshak · Post by **willshak** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:15 am

For a Antec Solo + Gigabyte EP35-DS4 motherboard, what's the best 9600GT silent card?

* Is it passive Gigabyte GV-NX96T512HP? But it has coil whine so less good.

* Is it passive Sparkle GeForce 9600 GT "Cool Pipe 3"? But it also has coil whine, and might not clear the DIMMs.

* Is it eVGA e-GeForce 9600 GT Superclocked, with Accelero S1 added? The combo is Â£30 more expensive than above cards, but it reportedly has no coil whine.

On to my real questions:

* Do you know for sure if the eVGA e-GeForce 9600 GT Superclocked and the Accelero S1 are compatible?

* Are there any better silent 9600GT choices than the above options?

Thanks!Kristian

HammerSandwich · Post by **HammerSandwich** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 7:44 pm

I bought this card, because I'm lazy & the price was right. Nice card, no complaints.

tehcrazybob · Post by **tehcrazybob** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 9:55 pm

Hammer: You don't have any coil whine with that card? I remember reading that their 8800gt had a huge coil whine problem.

That's really tempting, but I have a hard time with it. About a year ago when I had major problems with two consecutive ECS motherboards, I swore I would never again buy parts from them. Since then, I've found that they have a bit of a reputation for that. However, that's a nice card with an Accelero S2, for the price of just the card from any other manufacturer.

I'd like to hear opinions from a few more people, if anyone's bought that card. It's tempting, but it might be worth the extra $20 for peace of mind.

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 10:21 pm

i second the ECS 9600GT with Accelero.

i also had major problems with ECS products in the past, but i took a gamble myself, and bought an ECS 9600GT (the one without the Accelero, and its a great card, it definitely makes me respect ECS a little more.

the card is hot though. during boot, the card is my loudest component, but it spins down and blends in with the rest of my system.

if anything, just buy your favorite brand 9600GT, and then an Accelero with it...make sure you have VRM heatsinks and heatsinks on the RAM, you'll be set. if the cooler was closer to that of the 8800, then it would be cooler than it is, but the single slot card doesn't push the air out of the case, so eventually it will tend to bite.

HammerSandwich · Post by **HammerSandwich** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 7:22 am

I also have heard mixed things about ECS, but I believe this card is a reference design. It should come off the same assembly line as most of the other 9600GTs. If you demand a different brand, I suggest Evga, because they allow HSF swapping without voiding your warranty.

grant2 · Post by **grant2** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 12:45 pm

I'd say get the card you like & add aftermarket. But i'm less cost sensitive than many.

tehcrazybob · Post by **tehcrazybob** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 2:59 pm

I am indeed quite cost-sensitive. Despite my earlier reservations, I've gone ahead and ordered the ECS with S2 preinstalled. It should be here before the end of the week, and I'll post some thoughts when it shows up.

nstarz · Post by **nstarz** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 10:22 pm

Thank You for the link HammerSandwich. I didnt know there was a silent version for a few dollars more.

tehcrazybob, do you have an antec solo? If so can you post back here about how it fits in the case. I read that it might touch the case fan or other parts.

willshak, did you find which VGA to get?

surfer69 · Post by **surfer69** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 3:42 am

Hi I was also considering buying either the Sparkle or Gigabyte cards mentioned at the beginning of the thread.

Could someone please explain to me what is meant by the coil whine? I take it is some sort of whiny noise but is it really bad or annoying or would it be supportable?

I am planning on building a similiar system to willshak, An Antec P182 case and Gigabyte EP35-DS4 MB

I live in France and don't find the ECS card for sale anywhere so if I had to pick between the other 2 cards or a standard 9600GT which is the best option. I prefer not to change the VGA cooler.

Thanks for your help, Shaun

tehcrazybob · Post by **tehcrazybob** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 9:16 am

Surfer69: Coil whine is an irritating, high-pitched noise, but even when it's complained about it's usually not extremely loud. You'll hear it in an SPCR system, but the fans in any normal computer would generally drown it out. For example, the graphics card in my laptop has pretty bad coil whine, but only in 3D mode. It's louder than the hard drive and cooling fan, but if there's a game or music playing even at low volume, I don't notice it.

Nstarz: You're in luck, I do have a Solo. I'll let you know how it goes (tomorrow, hopefully) and if it's a tight fit I'll take a few pictures. I don't expect it to cause any problems, though - to hit the cooling fan it would have to extend above the card rather than beneath it.

DrJ · Post by **DrJ** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 10:12 am

tehcrazybob wrote:Nstarz: You're in luck, I do have a Solo. I'll let you know how it goes (tomorrow, hopefully) and if it's a tight fit I'll take a few pictures. I don't expect it to cause any problems, though - to hit the cooling fan it would have to extend above the card rather than beneath it.

It does fit fine, though working in the case is a PITA after it is installed. You also have to watch the power and SATA connectors on the drives and the power connector on the 9600 for clearance, but that one is not too bad. FWIW, I have an XFX 9600GT with an Accelero S2 with turbo fans in a Solo.

willshak · Post by **willshak** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 10:52 am

tehcrazybob wrote: You're in luck, I do have a Solo.

My intended Q9450 is now sold out most everywhere in the UK, and I haven't ordered my kit yet. So dito:

Does the ECS 9600GT MX-P have any coil whine or not? Does it fit in the Solo case?

rei · Post by **rei** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 4:43 pm

coil whine is a combination of your video card and power supply AND motherboard.

when i had a nearly inaudible seasonic s12-430, it would whine with certain video cards but not others. (i went through 18 video cards in 2 years in pursuit of quiet/silence)

Lt_Dan · Post by **Lt_Dan** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 4:37 am

coil whine is a low irritating buzz from electrical systems? how does it happen? does anyone know of a thread or site to get more info about it?

tehcrazybob · Post by **tehcrazybob** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 5:46 pm

It's arrived! It installed with no problems, and runs beautifully. There's not even a hint of coil whine, the build quality looks good, and the performance is breathtaking (it replaces a 7600gs).

Installation was no more difficult than any other expansion card. My cables are pretty well-managed, but unless your computer is complete chaos, I'd say you're not likely to run into troubles.

I've got an E6550 under a Ninja and the 9600gt/S2 both running passive in the flow provided by a single Nexus at 9v. My temperatures are fantastic; the processor runs 32Â°C idle, 38Â°C load and the new card runs 45Â°C idle, 56Â°C load. I could easily drop the fan to 7v, but since I'm using a resistor cable it's not completely straightforward. Still, I might do that in the future (once I've seen how it runs in the summer heat).

lemmy · Post by **lemmy** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:18 pm

tehcrazybob wrote:It's arrived! It installed with no problems, and runs beautifully. There's not even a hint of coil whine, the build quality looks good, and the performance is breathtaking (it replaces a 7600gs).

Installation was no more difficult than any other expansion card. My cables are pretty well-managed, but unless your computer is complete chaos, I'd say you're not likely to run into troubles.

I've got an E6550 under a Ninja and the 9600gt/S2 both running passive in the flow provided by a single Nexus at 9v. My temperatures are fantastic; the processor runs 32Â°C idle, 38Â°C load and the new card runs 45Â°C idle, 56Â°C load. I could easily drop the fan to 7v, but since I'm using a resistor cable it's not completely straightforward. Still, I might do that in the future (once I've seen how it runs in the summer heat).

Thanks for the post. How wide is your case? Maybe what is more to the point is what is the overall height from the motherboard to the top of the cooler on the card?? Nice pics BTW.

tehcrazybob · Post by **tehcrazybob** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 8:52 am

lemmy wrote:Thanks for the post. How wide is your case? Maybe what is more to the point is what is the overall height from the motherboard to the top of the cooler on the card??

The case in an Antec Solo, for anyone who missed that in one of my earlier posts. I'm not sure what the width of the case is, or what the clearance between the card and case is - the computer sits under my desk and it's too much work to get it out and open to take measurements. However, I just measured the packing material, and can tell you that the card stands just a bit less than six inches from the surface of the motherboard to the edge of the cooler.

lemmy wrote:Nice pics BTW.

Thanks! It's all about the lighting - you don't need a good camera, a tripod, or any special skills - you just need a strong light coming from an angle (ie, not the camera flash).

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 9:25 am

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... G_2421.jpg
^thats what my case looks like right now. that's the ECS 9600GT with stock cooler. i ordered an Accelero S1 which will hopefully arrive by wednesday, i'll install it by friday evening.

it'll get mainly passive cooling, but the SATA HDD will move up one space in the rack, and move the 92mm fan up one space to be closer to the Accelero.

tehcrazybob · Post by **tehcrazybob** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 10:28 am

Bonestonne: What's the double-fan stack on your exhaust? Is that actually two fans, or is one just the gutted frame of a fan acting as a duct?

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 10:53 am

it's a gutted fan to bring the exhaust fan closer to the ninja. its an experiment for now, it doesn't give me any better temps for the CPU.

once i'm done with my work i'm going to actually test removing it to see if the fan was too close to the ninja and causing turbulence (with the other fan). i'll also see if the added space helps drop the temps of the 9600.

the original fan i had broke, one post holding the hub cracked at the hub, and gluing it was a lost cause.

at the same time, that makes me ask a question to anyone with a 9600GT:

do you think that it gets hot enough to warrant a backside cooler?

edh · Post by **edh** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 12:31 pm

tehcrazybob wrote:the new card runs 45Â°C idle, 56Â°C load

How have you measured this load temperature? I have an S2 on a 9600GT with a slow spinning fan pointing at it which idles at ~36C but load temp (measured with Speedfan during gameplay) is >60C, highest I've seen was 74C.

bonestonne wrote:i ordered an Accelero S1 which will hopefully arrive by wednesday, i'll install it by friday evening.

As yet I've not seen any S1 vs S2 test. If you are doing a swap (forgive me if I've misread everything and you've not got an S2 on that ECS card) can you do some thorough temperature tests?

tehcrazybob · Post by **tehcrazybob** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:26 pm

edh wrote:How have you measured this load temperature? I have an S2 on a 9600GT with a slow spinning fan pointing at it which idles at ~36C but load temp (measured with Speedfan during gameplay) is >60C, highest I've seen was 74C.

Because you cast doubt on it, I rechecked my temperatures by running RTHDRIBL until the temperatures stabilized in SpeedFan. I suspect when I took my first reading, the system wasn't completely warmed up yet so even though the components leveled off, the case temperature was still slowly rising.

This second time around I got a peak of 65C on the video card, and although I never fully loaded the processor it was also running warmer than I originally stated. I'm not sure what my case temperature is, but my room temperature is 23C.

Still, if I'm getting 65C passive, yours should be a fair bit cooler with a fan nearby. Are you sure your thermal compound is well-applied? Does the whole heatsink get warm to the touch? I'm not sure what ECS did for the thermal interface, but the whole heatsink gets warm, which means the interface is working well. Where's the air coming from before it goes through the fan? I'm pretty sure most of the air going through my card comes in the rear vent, so it's room temperature rather than case temperature. Also, is your card overclocked at all, either factory or manually?

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:57 pm

edh wrote:
bonestonne wrote:i ordered an Accelero S1 which will hopefully arrive by wednesday, i'll install it by friday evening.
As yet I've not seen any S1 vs S2 test. If you are doing a swap (forgive me if I've misread everything and you've not got an S2 on that ECS card) can you do some thorough temperature tests?

surely, to my abilities. with only a 300W power supply, i'm very cautious as to how much load i put on the card, but it's seen the game Alice (old, but still a game) at max settings without hiccuping once.

i was doing some internal work a while ago, i'll have to update the picture of my inards later when i feel satisfied with it. at first i thought i had tamed the temps of the card, but i just slowed it down. seems to idle happily with the stock cooler at 47C haven't checked it after gaming, but i feel a pang coming, so after i visit family i'll wreak some havoc. i also noticed that while watching a movie, temps barely moved, fullscreen or windowed. continues to lack linux support, but meh, hopefully it'll come soon.

i'll finish when i get back, but there's more i have to say about the card.

edh · Post by **edh** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 3:12 pm

tehcrazybob wrote:Still, if I'm getting 65C passive, yours should be a fair bit cooler with a fan nearby.

Having looked back through, actually mine wasn't doing 74C. That was someone elses 8800GT I was comparing it too. The highest mine has gone looking back through Speedfan logs was 68C and that was looping Crysis benchmarks in a warm office, not where it normally sits. In normal use at home it'll only peak somewhere in the low 60's so we're both getting similar things. The lower idle temp I get is probably due to being in a fairly cool room and the intake fan in front of it drops that air on top of it slowly.

bonestonne wrote:continues to lack linux support, but meh, hopefully it'll come soon.

I'm running NVIDIA driver 169.12 x86-64 under SabayonLinux... sort of. About 25% of boots the X server doesn't start properly and corrupts the screen which requires a reboot to fix. The NVIDIA control panel works but doesn't provide much info on the card, DRI works, OpenGL works but I think it'll be a fair bit slower than it should be, I've also had mouse cursor problems in Nexuiz. Not good in general. 2D seems alright if you don't mind the X.org corruption lottery.

There have been a few betas since then which add proper support. 173.08 has been released as a beta today and it should be fairly close to final. I might give it a try.

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 4:34 pm

edh, that's exactly what happened to me. when i installed Ubuntu 8.04 beta in VMWare, it was perfect until i installed the glx driver...then i lost it.

i'd love to be able to just install, and not have a problem. graphic enhancements aren't at the top of my list, but being able to see what i'm doing is a major plus. but there's a big difference between this card and a PCI FX5200 that i used to use, so maybe i'm just in for good later?

i'll have to go into detail in my thread for my rig, hate hijacking threads (i see this as a comparison..loosely).

nstarz · Post by **nstarz** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 11:12 pm

tehcrazybob wrote: Nstarz: You're in luck, I do have a Solo. I'll let you know how it goes (tomorrow, hopefully) and if it's a tight fit I'll take a few pictures.

Thankz tehcrazybob.

Derfel · Post by **Derfel** » Sat Apr 12, 2008 1:59 am

I bought 2 BFG 9600GT OC's which I run in sli. Installed Accelero S1 Rev2's on both no problem in P180b, no fans on them. 42+45 idle, 51+56 load. No coil whine. However these were replacements for 2 x self branded ones from overclockers UK which did have a lot of coil whine and didn't even fit properly (pci bracket to long so couldn't screw).

Derfel · Post by **Derfel** » Sat Apr 12, 2008 2:00 am

double post sorry

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 7:05 pm

forget that, just massive misunderstanding.

i got off work early, so i was able to install the card over the past hour.

i worked slowly, but holy crap is there a difference.

My 9600GT had started up 10C cooler than with the stock cooler.

now, with qualms about having an S1 over an S2:

the VRM heatsink. doesn't fit. even with the ECS fanless 9600GT, you can see that the VRM's have no heatsinks. a fix for this could be 3 addition RAM heatsinks, which are the perfect size to fit on them. you can see on the stock heatsink that they're covered, so I'm curious as to why that wasn't adressed.

the RAM heatsinks work very well, but being unsatisfied with how the cooler is set up, i changed a few things.

here are some pics:

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... G_2428.jpg
^the card itself with S1 installed. you'll notice that all the plastic pieces have been taken off. they server no purpose, and i wanted them off, and they came off easily.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... G_2435.jpg
^VRM heatsink...as you can see, there's no way to mount this on the 9600GT. too bad.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... G_2438.jpg
^my cooling setup. semi-passive cooling on the 9600GT.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... G_2437.jpg
^ if the Scythe Ninja fits in your case, the Accelero S1 can.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/ ... G_2429.jpg
^I also removed the little plastic cover over the base of the heatsink. heat, and the fact that it's plastic made me do it, other than the fact that its just weight. it's easy to remove it, but you have to take out four screws and then slowly get the clip off the base. then you can wrestle it off without too many problems.

the card's been idling for around 40 minutes now, and is now sitting at 40C, which is still 7C cooler than the stock cooler. Still a vast improvement. Have yet to really tax the system with a game, but so far temps haven't gone past 56C, which was me playing Alice at max settings for 2 hours.

I'm curious as to whether or not temps would drop with VRM coolers on the card. But i have no way to test the theory.

JVM · Post by **JVM** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 5:49 am

tehcrazybob wrote:It's arrived! It installed with no problems, and runs beautifully. There's not even a hint of coil whine, the build quality looks good, and the performance is breathtaking (it replaces a 7600gs).

Installation was no more difficult than any other expansion card. My cables are pretty well-managed, but unless your computer is complete chaos, I'd say you're not likely to run into troubles.

I've got an E6550 under a Ninja and the 9600gt/S2 both running passive in the flow provided by a single Nexus at 9v. My temperatures are fantastic; the processor runs 32Â°C idle, 38Â°C load and the new card runs 45Â°C idle, 56Â°C load. I could easily drop the fan to 7v, but since I'm using a resistor cable it's not completely straightforward. Still, I might do that in the future (once I've seen how it runs in the summer heat).

What Ninja model is that? Another question I have is if you need to replace your rear Nexus, how are you going to get those rubber mounts into the fan? Looks like you will have to take off the heatsink, or?

Just thought of two more questions, how do you like that Gigabyte board ( EP35-DS4?)? And, how are you reading fan speeds and temps?