Passive cooling for Radeon

[NAC]

Using duct tape and some wire mesh, I've connected a 80mm fan to my CoolerMaster in my rather tight desktop case. And the duct sucks air direct from outside the case. There goes the biggest noise source

The Radeon is next. I want to take off the tiny hsf and put a 486 heat sink on without a fan. I think that some Radeons are passively cooled, but at a lower clock speed (144 instead of 166 if I remember right). I think with a nice sized hs, there wont be a problem at 166. I'll probably use Arctic Silver adhesive.

Any thoughts or advice?

 

[johneetrash]

i think someone said that the radeon runs cool anyway, and the fan was there just for asthetics... when people see fan they see high performance card, even though in the radeons case it isnt needed (i think i dont know )

 

[sygyzy]

You are right, everything you said.

 

[Duvie]

I think the best thing for Radeon is to invest in ramsinks...the GPU runs cool but the ram can get warm (especially if you oc)...get some ram sinks...I have a fan mounted on the side of the case blowing air across my pci cards.

The oem or LE versions are set to 148/148
Retail version of 32 is set to 166
Retail version of 64 is set to 183

Many have oc'd quite safely to 185/185 with the same passive cooling...but I think the ram is the weak link here...better to be safe than sorry.

GPU heatsink is definitely good enough!!!for minor oc'ing to 166/166 IMHO.