Geforce4 cooling; Thermaltake too loud

[Lord Evermore]

I don't really understand the utter lack of options for cooling a Geforce4. Thermaltake makes one (or two with the "mod" version) solution, and Zalman finally made a solution that's just way too expensive and worrisome for me. I can't seem to find any articles discussing ways of cooling a GF4, either.

I want something better than Thermaltake's GF4 cooler. It's pretty and all, but it's louder than everything else in my system. My Leadtek Ti4400's fans were crap and noisy, sounded like they were ready to fail a few months after I bought it, so I replaced the assembly with the Tt solution. As far as I can tell, it cools okay, but the fan on the first one I got started making noise a couple of months after I got it, so I bought another one, which seems to be working fine. Before I got this thing though, my system was whisper quiet (finally). My Barracuda drive was delighting me, compared to my whiny Maxtor drives, and I'd finally gotten a nice big heatsink and quiet fan for my processor.

Then I installed the frigging wind tunnel Thermaltake cooler. Now the system is louder than my space heater (which is pretty loud when sitting right next to me). And for all the noise, it's not even that good a cooler. The copper heatsink is nice, but the fan is rated at 29dB and 5500 RPM, but only moves 10.6CFM because it's so so small. It's about a 40mm or 45mm fan, but only like 8mm in height (10mm total height of the heatsink and fan). I suppose for that size fan, it moves a good amount of air, but I'd rather it be bulkier and quieter for the same airflow.

I want to replace it, but I'm not sure exactly what to use. I'm considering possibly a 45mm Alpha Z series from 2cooltek or maybe an Alpha wingfin heatsink, and then a quieter 40mm fan on top. I'm not sure though if a reduced airflow can be compensated for by the design of the regular heatsink, which looks like it might have more surface area than the Tt heatsink.

The other option is a 60mm heatsink and fan, which can be quieter and move a significantly larger amount of air. A Sanyo Denki 21dB fan can move 19CFM. This would have to be offset from the center of the GPU of course, but I think it would just barely fit without bumping into the RAM heatsinks and the AGP slot, and I could file it down a touch if needed.

The other option would be something like a Crystal Orb. However I'm not sure how well this would cool the GF4; Thermaltake hasn't made a version rated for the GF4, and nobody else has made any of the knockoffs for it either. There just aren't many fins for cooling on it, even with the very high airflow.

The other problem is how to attach it. With any solution that doesn't use pins, I'm stuck with either permanent adhesive, or frag tape. Frag tape of course is almost "terrible" at thermal transfer, even compared to Radio Shack stuff. But with permanent adhesive like Arctic Alumina Adhesive or Arctic Silver Adhesive, I'm obviously stuck with never being able to remove the heatsink. This wouldn't be a completely terrible thing, but I prefer to keep my options open when possible. I can't imagine any time I'd want to remove a quiet powerful cooling system, and the fan can be replaced if it fails, but maybe one day I want to use the card in a system without room for the heatsink, or use the first PCI slot.

So, any direct suggestions of options for cooling this thing, or suggestions regarding the options I've come up with? I'm leaning towards the 60mm setup with some sort of Arctic adhesive, since that will provide the best cooling and has the fewest downsides.

 

[godmare]

Well, I would normally recommend the Zalman heatpipe passive GF4 cooling (based on reviews and attitude, not direct experience), but you've indicated you don't feel comfortable using it.

I would have to say nix the idea of any other Thermaltake product, like the orb, as it will be loud as well.
Someone had posted recently that they were having really excellent resutlts using a Thermalright SK-6+ as passive cooling on a GF4. The proble with that would be blocking at least one pci slot, as well as the weight (though it could be suspended or otherwise managed, I'm sure), and possibly appearance if you have a window or some such thing.

 

[Lord Evermore]

The SK-6+ is a bit bigger than I'm interested in, and concern over total weight is one reason I don't want to use the Zalman cooler. I'm only going for "acceptable" cooling really; good enough to handle the heat output when it's running at full sprint in a game, but I am not concerned with ensuring that it's at the absolute lowest temperature possible at all times. I'm not overclocking the chip at all, and I've got the inside of the case reasonably cool overall.

Appearance isn't very important, I think case windows are lame.

Hrm...for some reason I hadn't even looked at the selection of 60mm heatsinks I might have to choose from. There don't seem to be any "short" 60mm sinks that come by themselves, without a fan. I'm really looking for something like 10 to 20mm high, so that the fan and heatsink combo only reaches 40 to 45mm or so, since that's about as close as you can get without blocking the second PCI slot (not that I'm using it, but the whole retaining versatility thing). There don't seem to be many low profile 60mm fans either, 25mm seems to be the smallest available.

A low profile heatsink for a 1U case would be the perfect size, but they all seem to come with fans, and I'd rather not pay an extra 10 bucks for a fan I don't need (since they'll be fast and loud).

 

[chizow]

Hmmm, since you're not OC'ing, have you considered a passive CPU/chipset cooler like the one's Zalman offer? Not the big flower one, one of the 50/60mm copper ones they offer. I've had a blowhole right over my PCI/AGP slots in my last two cases, so a quality passive cooler with an 80mm blowing on top of it just might work. I never thought my GF4 (Albatron Turbo at 310/650 with high quality stock cooler tho) got hot at all compared to the GF3's I run and my current 9700pro.

Chiz

 

[Lord Evermore]

Well, I briefly considered a heatsink with a side fan blowing on it, but I definitely don't want to go modifying my case, and I'm not sure what sort of airflow I could get with it otherwise. It's an Antec case, plenty of space between the slot mounts and the side of the case, but I don't know what sort of recycling of the hot air would occur, I don't want to end up just blowing already heated air back onto it (although I figure that happens with stock cooling anyway). And of course I'm not sure what sort of effect a fan in that position might have on the airflow for the rest of the system, it might disturb the currents and make cooling of the CPU less effective.

I'm a worrier.

 

[chizow]

Hehe yah, I hear ya. You might also consider a slot blower, although that option is less appealing b/c they normally take up PCI 1 and 2 depending on the profile of the blower. You can get a slot header in PCI 2 though. They also have the blowers that mount like HDD blowers on top of the PCI cards, but again, stagnant airflow might be an issue.

I've found that having side blowers works very well, bringing in cool air to the areas that need them most. On my modded Enlight 7237, I placed a blower directly above the Socket A blowing cool air onto my Alpha 8045. Dropped temps 4C just like that. As long as the panel fans are low rpm, they won't cause too much turbulence; outtake is more important around the VGA/CPU/PSU area IMO, so feeding those hotspots with cool air is a priority in my cooling set-ups.

Chiz

 

[godmare]

How about throwing a 7volt mod on the Thermaltake? It's very simple to do (and undo), and you can decide if its quiet enough for you at that time. If not, take a look at these:
Vantec Iceberg and
Vantec Iceberg Solid Copper,
both at SVC.

Edit:
According to this review, the copper Vantec Iceberg is rated at 26 dB, not significantly lower than the Thermaltake's 29dB rating.
I would suggest just trying the 7 volt mod on the Thermaltake before anything else.

 

[dannybin1742]

why not try a 1U cooler? like a tt


thermal take 1U at newegg

 

[Lord Evermore]

I considered modding the GF4 Tt cooler to 7V, but I was concerned about cooling performance at that speed. It's only pushing 10CFM as it is. I don't know how much lower it'd get at 7V, and while I'm not looking for arctic conditions, I don't want the GPU stewing in the upper levels of its heat limits.

Thermaltake's 1U coolers and all others I've seen, have very loud fans since they need to push significant amounts of air to cool a processor with such a small heatsink. That one is rated at 39dB at only 4800RPM. I don't know how much quieter it would be with a 7V mod. It's also 70mm wide at the smallest, so I'd have to take 10mm off to fit it onto the card with the RAM heatsinks installed, and it can't cover the ramsinks by itself (the original Leadtek one-piece heatsink covered both and is significantly stepped to the lower level of the ramsinks). While I could probably handle taking off that much of the heatsink, I'd be concerned about warping it and stuff, and the addition of not being sure about the noise level is also an issue. I could of course put a different fan on it, however since most of the fans I can find are 25mm high, that would make the total height about 50mm.

If I could be sure of the noise level of a 1U cooler's fan with a voltage mod, then I'd probably go that route. However since thermal adhesive is my most likely choice for keeping this thing attached, I really have to be sure I've chosen the right device for cooling it.

 

[godmare]

Aside from water cooling, which I don't get the impression is an option , I believe I'm stumped...
You could still try the 7 volt mod and check system stability, perhaps with 3dMark. If the system is unstable or you are uncomfortable with the results, you could very easily change the fan back to 12 volts.

It just so happens that I have that same Thermaltake vga cooler, though not installed due to card specific complications that needn't really apply to this thread... Anyway, I plugged it into my psu earlier this evening at both 12v and 7v, and I can assure you that the noise reduction was significant.

 

[Lord Evermore]

I guess maybe I'll give the mod a try, I plan on shutting things down sometime soon to rearrange my room anyway.

I'll also have to look and see if a real 40mm fan could be mounted on top of the heatsink without the stock fan installed.

 

[Ilmater]

Originally posted by: godmare
Edit:
According to this review, the copper Vantec Iceberg is rated at 26 dB, not significantly lower than the Thermaltake's 29dB rating. I would suggest just trying the 7 volt mod on the Thermaltake before anything else.

Ah, but you forget. Decibel ratings are logarithmic. In other words, a 29dB sound had twice the "strength" of a 26dB sound.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Yeah but that means a nice 21dB fan would be like a mosquito's wing noise compared to the unmuffled Harley engine of a 26dB fan.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Well, I forgot about the Fan Only connectors on the Antec True330. I plugged the cooler into that, and it seems to be a little quieter, but the stock Athlon fan is so loud it's hard to be sure. Later today I'm going to swap that for my AX-7 with a Panaflo on it, which was dead silent. There also seems to be a bit of a rattle from the fan now, and a noticeable speeding up and slowing down of the noise which I assume is the PSU changing speeds a lot.


Whee! Swapped out the fans. I cannot believe how clogged with dust the stock cooler was. It was only running for a couple of weeks since the last time I thought I'd blown it clean. Apparently it needs a lot more attention to blow out the dust than a normal cooler, due to the closely packed fins. There was a layer of dust clogging the whole thing, almost no air able to get past it.

The AX-7 is doing admirably well though. It's keeping the temperature at 100% load with Seti to 46C according to Motherboard Monitor, using the special DLL for the A7N8X and the non-diode sensor reading. It reads 24C with the diode reading, which is 2 degrees less than the case temperature reading. I don't think the MBM programmer has quite gotten the A7N8X readings right yet, and the site has been down for a long time now, so I don't know if he's updated it again.

The system is whisper quiet now. The stock Athlon fan is horrendous, I didn't realize they'd made them so much louder than what came with 1GHz T-birds and such. The VGA cooler was contributing to the noise for sure, since I'd been using it with the old system with the AX-7, but the stock Athlon fan was definitely the primary culprit. My roommate didn't believe the machine was on when I was testing it.