konakona
Diamond Member
I got one of these back when they were $10 FS after GCO discount.
The card served me well for a while, then the 1900gt came which replaced it for the secondary rig. While I am waiting for the new 8800gts comes out and the dust settles in the vid card sector, I decided to put this in my main c2d rig. Again, the card worked fine.
Then I noticed higher than expected noise coming from my supposedely quiet secondary rig, even when the notorious 1900gt stock fan was manually turned off (just for a second or two, not trying to kill the card really 🙂). Eventually, I found out what a loud POS by nature DFI Lanparty northbridge fan is at 7000+ RPM, and must be replaced by something like evercool VC-RE or vantec CC-A1C.
While I was testing things out though, I suspected the vid card at one point and unplugged the fan from the 7300 LE, thinking this thing cant get THAT hot with no 3d action at all. The case was relatively well cooled too, never imagined things would get that bad.
Lo and behold, when i took the card out, the fan was clearly burnt beyond repair. It was obvious that the damage is heatsink heat induced (as opposed to the fan getting stuck or something), as I never put the card elsewhere after taking it out after the one and only short fanless run. The fan was detachable from the HS and I already screwed it off.
This reallly puzzles me. What I have is a very minimalistic card that is stripped off of most of its features to cut cost, aimed for low power consumption and slim size. Not to mention general 2d desktop use is unlikely to generate such alarming amount of heat, at least to my understanding. Was I completely wrong?
Luckily, Fry's sells the CC-A1C for under $7. Then I must wonder if it is really worth to spend $7 on cooling on something that I got for $10 and would never use for 3d purposes (yeah, I know I am cheap, please dont flame 🙂). I know these things can tolerate a quite a bit of heat build up, not that I would really care if it happens to fail one day. I just dont want this thing to take the entire system down along with it. Any thoughts? As much as this is a question seeking for advice, it is a astonishing observation on my part on the vga heat output in 2d mode.
The card served me well for a while, then the 1900gt came which replaced it for the secondary rig. While I am waiting for the new 8800gts comes out and the dust settles in the vid card sector, I decided to put this in my main c2d rig. Again, the card worked fine.
Then I noticed higher than expected noise coming from my supposedely quiet secondary rig, even when the notorious 1900gt stock fan was manually turned off (just for a second or two, not trying to kill the card really 🙂). Eventually, I found out what a loud POS by nature DFI Lanparty northbridge fan is at 7000+ RPM, and must be replaced by something like evercool VC-RE or vantec CC-A1C.
While I was testing things out though, I suspected the vid card at one point and unplugged the fan from the 7300 LE, thinking this thing cant get THAT hot with no 3d action at all. The case was relatively well cooled too, never imagined things would get that bad.
Lo and behold, when i took the card out, the fan was clearly burnt beyond repair. It was obvious that the damage is heatsink heat induced (as opposed to the fan getting stuck or something), as I never put the card elsewhere after taking it out after the one and only short fanless run. The fan was detachable from the HS and I already screwed it off.
This reallly puzzles me. What I have is a very minimalistic card that is stripped off of most of its features to cut cost, aimed for low power consumption and slim size. Not to mention general 2d desktop use is unlikely to generate such alarming amount of heat, at least to my understanding. Was I completely wrong?
Luckily, Fry's sells the CC-A1C for under $7. Then I must wonder if it is really worth to spend $7 on cooling on something that I got for $10 and would never use for 3d purposes (yeah, I know I am cheap, please dont flame 🙂). I know these things can tolerate a quite a bit of heat build up, not that I would really care if it happens to fail one day. I just dont want this thing to take the entire system down along with it. Any thoughts? As much as this is a question seeking for advice, it is a astonishing observation on my part on the vga heat output in 2d mode.
