Cooling dilemma

[Fire&Blood]

Temps in this mid tower are ok but the GPU is a bit too loud and just a few degrees too hot, both idling in desktop and under full load 47C/89C. Rather than hunting down a quiet custom cooler for the card, (which I paid less than $70 for) I have a 120mm fan laying around that I want to mount in order to cool the GPU. I'm hoping the 120mm can help cool the card so that the GPU fan doesn't have to fast and noisy. If this is feasible, where should I mount it? Below the video card and parallel to it, blowing at the GPU intake? Or maybe mount above or sideways, to use the ventilation holes to hit the side of the card, where it's secondary heat outlets are?

 

[dma0991]

Adding in a side fan will only give it cooler air but it will not likely be making it quieter, it is the very nature of blower fans to be noisy and a tad hotter than 3rd party cooler models. Having a side fan blow at it is as good as having a laptop cooler blowing at the bottom of the laptop, minimal difference at best.

Your options would be to replace the heatsink of the GPU with something from Artic Cooling at the expense of warranty but it will definitely be cooler and silent. Else, find yourself a fan that mounts to PCI slots that either blows air directly to the blower hole, the only ones I've seen sucks air.

 

[Fire&Blood]

Adding in a side fan will only give it cooler air but it will not likely be making it quieter, it is the very nature of blower fans to be noisy and a tad hotter than 3rd party cooler models. Having a side fan blow at it is as good as having a laptop cooler blowing at the bottom of the laptop, minimal difference at best.

Your options would be to replace the heatsink of the GPU with something from Artic Cooling at the expense of warranty but it will definitely be cooler and silent. Else, find yourself a fan that mounts to PCI slots that either blows air directly to the blower hole, the only ones I've seen sucks air.

Thank you. I should have phrased myself better, what I wanted to know is which placement would be more beneficial but it's time for some good ol' trial and error. Placement you suggested sounds like the optimal solution, for some reason I assumed having the fan attached to the side panel and suck in outside air through the holes in the side panel to blow at the GPU's secondary exhausts (visible in the picture) would be quieter.
Sound advice about buying a real cooler for it but this is a cheap temp card without warranty, it will be replaced by Fall if not sooner. The thought process behind my idea was to use the fan I already have so no time/money spent, mount it a slot or 2(?) below the GPU blowing air into the GPU. Since the fan is a 120mm, it's less audible than the GPU one. Hence me thinking that the card being cooler due to the 120mm will also result in less RPM needed by GPU's fan. My primary concern is to have it quieter in idle, secondary to get it cooler under load.

 

[dawp]

you plan on mounting the 120 below the funnel? where the holes are right above the card? is so you will need to drill some mount holes for the fan. double sided tape may work temporarily to see how much lower your temps will drop but you will have to drill some mounting holes to mount it permanently.

also, how many fans do you have mounted besides the back one? and what case is that.

when you say below and parallel to it, do you mean on the case floor?I don't see any mounting points in that location (or side panel either). you're going to have to do some modding to mount a fan on the floor. Or do you mean suspend the fan in mid air below the card? do you have a fan on the front of the case? there should be at least one mounting spot for a fan in front of the drive cage.

 

[natto fire]

Sorry I can't answer your fan question directly, but I was wondering how old the card is and if you have thoroughly dusted it before?

I have a 5770 with the same reference design, and when I took my card apart it was choked with dust on the leading edge of the heatsink. The outside didn't really look that dusty so I was pretty surprised how much dust was in there. After doing that and reapplying arctic silver TIM, I saw a pretty significant temp drop (was around 7 - 10 degrees IIRC)

YMMV, and your case looks a bit cleaner than mine. I used to live in an area that was essentially a dust storm for 5-7 weeks in early spring.