Gigabyte's silent X800

[ShmooDude]

How hot does it get? I've read several reviews of it and while they say it gets "hot" they don't say how hot and if its too hot.

My computer typicly has an ambient temprature of 35-40C (according to my FX5900). The gpu (with a LOUD fan, which is why I'm considering this silent option) is about 45-50C at idle and 60-65C at load.

I currently have 1 intake and 1 outtake fan with areas for a second outtake and/or an intake by the hard disk drives. Would I have sufficent ventalation for this card?

In munky's post here he said that the fan is fairly loud on the Sapphire one which is something I'm trying to avoid. The other two options are to get the Powercolor x800 which has GDDR1 memory but will allow me to overclock the core (Gigabyte doesn't run at more than stock due to heat) or the Leadtek 6600GT as I know its quiet since it has the same fan as my brother's Leadtek 6600 and from the Anandtech review.

Can anyone make any suggestions or comments?

 

[Rudee]

I have a Gigabyte X800XL on one of my workstation PC's. Runs whisper quiet. Great card. Hot to the touch after it's been runing a long time but zero problems.

 

[amdworldx]

here is a screenshoot of my X800 Gigabyte GV-RX80256D
HERE

 

[ShmooDude]

Originally posted by: amdworldx
here is a screenshoot of my X800 Gigabyte GV-RX80256D
HERE

So 50C idle then? That's not much worse than my FX5900. Ambient temp is probably a bit higher since the heat is not being blown away. Sounds like no one has had any problems with this as long as you run it at stock speeds.

 

[midnight growler]

I'm looking at Gigabyte's somewhat-silent 6800GT and have been wondering about the same thing. I hear that those cheap fans that fit in a PCI slot work well. They may not last too long, but for $10 or $15 each, its ok if they only last 6 months.

 

[imported_Truenofan]

just get a arctic cooling unit, i got one and its damn near silent. should try it, i hit 60c under load while overclocked.

 

[ShmooDude]

Originally posted by: Truenofan
just get a arctic cooling unit, i got one and its damn near silent. should try it, i hit 60c under load while overclocked.

Hmm... How much are those and how hard are they to install? I've only ever installed a CPU heatsink before (on my Athlon XP). Also, this voids any warrenty it has correct (Though actually my parents have like a platinum card which has a replacement policy for any reason (even if you step on it they'll replace it, pretty neat).

 

[BFG10K]

I had to RMA my Gigabyte X800 XL because of bad RAM but I'm looking forward to getting the replacement as the difference is huge compared to my 6800U in terms of lack of noise.

When idle it's around 50C and under gaming load it reaches about 75C tops which isn't that much more than my 6800U, plus it's completely silent. Tech-report ran theirs for an eight hour stress test with only one system fan and it passed the test with any artifacts or lockups.

The vanilla X800 would be cooler than the X800 XL.

 

[ShmooDude]

That shouldn't be too bad. How hot is too hot for these cards? I know my FX5900 doesn't even throttle till 120C which to me seems way high.

 

[Munky]

The gigabyte x800 should be a good card if you want a quiet pc. The reason I got the sapphire one is because I want to OC it, othewise I would have gotten the gigabyte card. Also, the gygabyte version comes with OC'd mem (980mhz), so you would already have better performance than a stock x800 (700mhz mem).

Anyway, IMO, the best solution is to buy a zalman vf700, and install it instead of the original heatsink. It cools way better than a stock cooler, and it's pretty quiet too. It worked really well on my OC'd 9800p, and now I'm about to put it on my x800, and see how much more I can OC it.

 

[ShmooDude]

Can anyone answer questions pertaining to heat? Is having a hotter running chip going to reduce the lifespan of the card? How hot is too hot? Does having it too hot damage it over time with heavy use? Anything else you can think of

 

[ShmooDude]

Bump

 

[dguy6789]

The hotter a pc component, the shorter it's lifespan. But to what impact a high temperature will have on lifetime has all to do with what kind of hardware we are talking about.

A CPU for instance, can have a lifespan of over 15 years before it dies due to electromigration. The hotter the cpu runs, the quicker electromigration occurs. But even a severely overclocked cpu(lets say a P4 3ghz running at 4) will still have a life of over 7 years most likely.

With a harddrive, higher temperatures can cause mechanical failures such as slow spin up and down times, as well as a very high seek time, to total hardware failure.

With a video card, in my experience, temperature will not affect the life of it too much at all. The video card would likely be very old and obsolete by the time it will have a hardware malfunction.

 

[ShmooDude]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
The hotter a pc component, the shorter it's lifespan. But to what impact a high temperature will have on lifetime has all to do with what kind of hardware we are talking about.

A CPU for instance, can have a lifespan of over 15 years before it dies due to electromigration. The hotter the cpu runs, the quicker electromigration occurs. But even a severely overclocked cpu(lets say a P4 3ghz running at 4) will still have a life of over 7 years most likely.

With a harddrive, higher temperatures can cause mechanical failures such as slow spin up and down times, as well as a very high seek time, to total hardware failure.

With a video card, in my experience, temperature will not affect the life of it too much at all. The video card would likely be very old and obsolete by the time it will have a hardware malfunction.

Thank you, that's what I was lookign for

I suppose the ultimate question that I think I've gotten answered but I will ask it anyhow is this: Will this card function in a room where it can get up to 32C in temp? I read another post about a SilentPipe 6600GTs in SLI that ran at 100C and produced significant graphical artifacts. I do play for long periods of time (though this will slow down a lot as college starts up again in the fall).

Thanks to everyone for all the help.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Get the Zalman VF700 Copper cooler. That thing rocks and is quite near silent if that's what you're looking for..

 

[ShmooDude]

Originally posted by: DLeRium
Get the Zalman VF700 Copper cooler. That thing rocks and is quite near silent if that's what you're looking for..

Yeah, a lot of people seem to be recomending that option. How difficult is it to install? Obviously it voids any warranty (though RMAing isn't the most painless of processes usually...). I've only ever installed a CPU heatsink on my XP1900 (Zalaman silent heatsink).

 

[scrawnypaleguy]

I have that card, and have had no problems whatsoever. Go for it. By the way, I also get about 50c idle, i dunno what it is at load, but i two extremely slow running intake 80mm fans and one extremely slow exhaust 80mm in my case, so i don't have much airflow.

 

[TheShmooDude]

Well I got it and it definatly runs a little hot. Yeah its about 48-50C idle and about 82C Load with my CPU fan on full load (ie loud which kinda defeated the purpose). If I have my CPU fan (Zalman 7000B-AlCu, good thing it wasn't the 7700 wouldn't of fit ) on idle, I've seen it get as hot as 89C so what I did was I placed a 92mm fan (my case fans all have to be 80mm) inside the square shaped drive enclosure (moved all my drives up by the floppy) so that its enhances the air intake which is positioned approximatly over that card. I haven't really done extensive tests but I believe this kept it under 84C at all times.

All these temps are under spec... technicly. Am I just being too paranoid about it and shouldn't worry unless it is causing lockups (which even reaching 90c it doesn't)? Granted the more I run it at high temps the shorter the life but I'd expect it to last till I need a new one anyhow (a few years).

Being a silent heatsink it takes it a dang long time to plateau. I'd say probably a good 30 minutes of CSS before it hits its maximum heat (which depends on the rest of the airflow in the case.

Well, thought I'd share my experience with everyone. it runs fine, definatly faster than stock due to the memory (in 3dmark05, I know, not the best but I don't have anything else to compare it to other than a 6600 which it should beat hands down...). Locks up even after a 1.5 mhz overclock, not sure if there's some artifical limitation in play because its not heat in this case because it never gets past the warmup period.

EDIT: Oh yah, had to create a new forum account cuz I lost the old password and the forums won't e-mail it to me for some reason...