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Quiet video card suggestions??? Thanks!

J

JammingJay

Golden Member
Hey gang. I'm at the point where gaming isn't as important as it once was, and wanted to see if anyone had a suggestion on a quiet video card. I know several factors go into a quiet system but here is my dilemna.

What I have:

Dell 8250, 2.4ghz with Radeon 9700 pro.

I remember my stock system had a Geforce 4 420MX card in it before I went through several stages of upgrades. The computer itself was almost dead silent, but I've noticed that as I upgraded, it seems the case fan and obviously GPU fan have gotten louder.

My concern is if I were to swap the fan over the Radeon 9700 gpu with say a Zalman heatsink cooler, my system itself still would be hot enough that the rear case fan will be on full blast on the time. Granted, this would still be less audible than my setup now, but I'd rather go for something more quiet.

I also know either a Geforce 4 440MX card with a stock heatsink vs a fan/heatsink, or maybe even a FX5200 with a similar cooling setup would be quiet, but are there any graphics cards with a fan (Geforce 4 Ti for example, so I can at least keep some performance) in your guy's opinion that is relatively quiet even under a load? Are aftermarket fans more quiet in your opinion? I've taken the libery to even go back to a single HD setup, remove the floppy, go USB instead of PCI on some internal components, and just 1 optical drive in hopes of cooling the system even more, but its still getting a bit loud with my current setup.

Should I stick with the Radeon 9700 pro and just get a aftermarket heatsink or fan? Or go back to the go old Geforce 4 Mx series?

Any suggestions, experiences would be most helpful.

Thanks in advance, Jay
 
Glad to see you're considering the Zalman. The heatpipes are actually really good, and I'd be willing to bet your rear exhaust won't be nearly as loud as you think it will. If you want total silence though, you're going to have to stay in the low-performance bracket.

- M4H
 
If you want the quietest... go with a GF4 MX420 that uses passive cooling. They do exist, I've seen them, but they're not common because lets face it... if it has a fan on it, it must run really hot cause it's really fast, right?😉
 
Excellent points, I'll try the Zalman to see how well it works, and if not back to the trusty dusty Geforce MX line. Thanks for the inputs, most appreciated.
 
i am using a zalman on my geforce 4 ti-4200 and my case is super quiet now. the stock fan that came with it made the most noise in my case. silence is golden 🙂

zalman
 
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