Are they worth it, like comparable to CPU coolers? Ive got overclocking my card in mind so will want temps low as possible, any suggestions on what I can get? would love a watercooled cooler like H80 lol Additionally is it possible to aircool NB directly with air?
Nope, sadly not. Although with some clever modding you can always attach a small quiet fan to those heatsinks.
If you don't care about noise then just stick to the stock cooler. But if you do, and you've got a reasonable airflow, 3rd party GPU coolers are excellent to keep sound down. For a silent computer with powerful GPU, there is no contest between the stock cooler and 3rd part coolers like the Thermalright Shaman or similar. As for watercooling (real watercooling, not the stuff from corsair), it was clearly better a few years ago for a quiet but powerful computer. But all that was doing was moving the cooling elsewhere to very efficient radiators to dissipate the heat. And nowdays, with the massive aircoolers available to you, and more efficient case airflow, aircooling is just as efficient as these rads, if not more in many cases. As for noise, two 800rpm fan's blowing over a double rad for a hot running GPU verses a 700rpm 14" fan blowing over that Shaman make similar noise. Still, anything is better than the stock coolers.
Its not noise, it s cooling I want to get into overclocking more but doing it without risk almost lol, although not really risk free. Ive just recently acquired a N560 Ti Hawk MSI, its the one stock @ 950mhz clock. I got afterburner too but not sure how to approach the overclocking with it, different from a CPU? I.e no multipler, so any tips on what should be increased first and by how much would be excellent.
easiest thing to do is change the TIM on the card as the stuff that will be on there as standard will be shite
Listen to this... Earlier this year I went I decided to buy an MSI 560Ti Twin FrozrII OC 880mhz. I was led to believe it was cool and quiet. The thing sounded like a vacuum cleaner on Bad company 2 and the temps were 75 to 83c during the UK summer (wasn't expecially hot summer). Seeing as I liquid cool my CPU and a hard disk, I bought an EK VGA waterblock for £38 pounds. Because the original MSI 560Ti heatpipe only directly cooled the GPU core, fitting a core only waterblock is not a problem. My GPU temps went from 83c to 39c in summer and are 36c or lower in winter. I have 2 x 560Ti and both liquid cooled. The EK VGA blocks are easy to fit and universal so I can use them on future GPU's. My GPU temps are less than half and without noise. Silent!
Turn up the clock speeds, test for stability with heaven/vantage/3Dmark11/actual games, turn up voltage a bit if not stable. Continue until you reach a stable overclock with reasonable temps.
what are reasonable temps for 100% load, say BF3 or batman AC? I was @ around 72c last night for batman AC, running for about an hour.
In terms of increments how much would that be from my current clock speed which is 950Mhz and how much should I be increasing by i.e 10mhz or?
It's not the clock speed you need to worry about, it's the extra voltages. I tend to increase in 10mhz jumps until I reach a point where extra volts /high temps causes stability problems, then go back to the last stable setting and increase in single mhz increases.
