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Need PCI Slot Cooler Recommendation

R

RobDMB

Senior member
I have a pci tv tuner card that I think is running a bit hot so I would like to get a pci slot cooler to try to cool it down and see if it increases stability. Can anyone give me any advise as to which slot cooler is recommended. I really have no idea what the difference is among the products. Thanks, Rob
 
Actually the Haupapuge PVR 350 is known to run extrmely hot. It is an older reference design and some people have reported more stability using a pci type cooling card.
 
Ahh... must be the hardware MPEG2 encoder/decoder? If it really dose run that hot maybe try to add a better heatsink to the chipset on the card and/or improve your case air flow through more convention means.
 
I've never done anything like add a heatsink before and I think there is already a small heatsink on the chip so I would have to remove that. I thought a pci cooler would be the easiest and cheapest option. I was wondering if there is any specific brand that is recommended. I've been looking at the antec cyclone and also a product called Vantec Spectrum. One seems to exhaust hot air while the other seems to just blow air up onto the card. I'm wondering which solution would be better?
 
I've been reading around. It seems this vantec spectrum is decently regarded if not a bit noisey. I kind of like that it has 2 fans since it will defintely cover the full length of the card. I'm still open to opinions however. -ROb
 
I bought the Vantec Spectrum Fan Card, and I would say it's too noisy. On low speed, the fans don't really make noise BUT the freaking Pulse Wave Modulation emits a humming/grumbling sound that is annoying as hell. On high speeds, it just sounds like a freaking hurricane. so there's no real balance that satisifies me. Maybe if Vantec just used a HI/LOW switch we may not need to deal with the PWM.

A rear exhaust for the Fan Card would be nice too.
 
get one that blows on to the heatsink rather than one that sucks air from it. And i woudnt worry abt cooling the rest of the card ..its only the encoder chip thats the problem on the 350. here what i did with my 350. I have holes in a pci slot below the 350. I mounted a 80 mmm panaflo with double sided sticky tape on the opposite end of the pci bracket. This forces air thro the cards . this has worked for me so far.. before i coudnt even touch the heatsink on the 350, now its just warm to the touch.. not scalding hot !
 
zinkpig:
Thats the kind of result I would like however I'm not sure exactly what you mean with your fan setup. Are there any prebuilt models that you would recommend for the pvr 350?
 
Like others, I'd recommend not bothering with a PCI slot cooler and find another solution.

A quick test to see if your stability is really tuner card related would be to pop the side off the case and blow air directly onto the card.

If it turns out that it's really due to high temps, if you have a warm case (say more than 6C above ambient), you may want to focus on lowering overall case temps. If your case temps are already close to ambient, see a mounting bracket for a standard fan (there's a Zalman branded one) would work in your case.

I'd try a PCI slot cooler as an absolute last resort.
 
Originally posted by: zinkpig
get one that blows on to the heatsink rather than one that sucks air from it. And i woudnt worry abt cooling the rest of the card ..its only the encoder chip thats the problem on the 350. here what i did with my 350. I have holes in a pci slot below the 350. I mounted a 80 mmm panaflo with double sided sticky tape on the opposite end of the pci bracket. This forces air thro the cards . this has worked for me so far.. before i coudnt even touch the heatsink on the 350, now its just warm to the touch.. not scalding hot !
Click to expand...

wow... that sounds like a serious design flaw on the part of Haupapuge..
 
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