Sparkle Caliber 9600GT

[SolMiester]

Hi all, trying to lock down a new 9600GT card, but dont like the standard fan setups, too loud and the card runs hot.

I found this in NZ, but cant find any reviews.

I'm not concerned with the overclock, I may even reduce to normal speeds in order to keep fan quite....

Thoughts

 

[Lithan]

Uh, reviews? Look at the cooler. Does it look good? Then it probably is. Otherwise, the card will perform just like any other 9600gt. As for stock cooler. It looks the same as the 8800gt cooler, which is just horrible. But the 9600gt runs ice cold and my palit was dead silent and cool to the touch... the cooler probably doesn't have to be good on a 9600gt. The palit was an orb that looked like something out of the socket 370 days.

 

[SolMiester]

Hi Lithan, just concern with the small fans, you know what they say about small fan, big noise is all. I wanted a review to check noise levels...
I havent seen the fan assembly on the 88GT, i though they were single fans?

I must have been getting mixed up with the 88GT's, I thought the standard 96GT fan was quite noisey?!

 

[IndieSnob]

I have the Palit 9600GT and I'll be damned if I can hear the fan on the thing at all.

 

[SolMiester]

Is that the sonic model or the one with the orb?

The dual fan sparkle does look sexy though?, and I do have a window with upside down mobo, so the fan assembly etc is visible!

 

[Lithan]

It does, that cooler on the sparkle isn't the standard cooler, the STANDARD 9600gt cooler looks just like the standard 8800gt cooler and is single fan.

As for fan size, well, what do you expect on gfx. 40-50mm is pretty standard on everything but the dual slot "blower" style fans. And those look 50 or 60mm to me.

Most nvidia cards now have temp controlled fans (xfx's low end models are one exception to this), so noise is very much related to temps.

 

[mwmorph]

It looks like a Thermaltake Duorb and if it's anything like it, it's not silent but it has a very low hum. Not intrusive or noticeable at all. It is audible but far from annoying since it's quieter and lower pitched than most stock fans.

I sleep about 8-10 feet away from my desktop pc and I don't turn it off an night, it's not intrusive at all.