I have a his excalibur x850 xt pe and it's out of the box cooling solution (the concept cooler that ati has) is a little noisy ... now I'm wondering if I should go with Zalman vf700 cu or Arctic Cooling ATI VGA Silencer 5 Rev.2.0 ... yhough I've heard some stories about people destroying their graphics cards with the arctic cooling cooler, so I'd like to know if they are lies or truth and what experience do you guys have about theese coolers... and yes I've considered water cooling but my budget might not like that idea, yet...
Same on a 9800SE aiw, tbh, your only gonna break the card if your dumb enough to need to it properly like the instructions say.
well if your worried about installing it correctly it would a good idea wouldnt it I have an arctic cooler on my 9700pro and had no real problems fitting it.
arctic cooler on a 9200 here. it didnt quite fit so a little modding was required its not made to fit the 9200's and i had to file a lil peice of the block down so it would miss a couple of caps, once i'd done that, it went on a treat and its run just fiiiiiiine. even with the little bit of filing (i knew it wasnt made for the card, i just wanted to see if i could mod it on), i was pretty suprised at how easy it is to fit, you cant really go wrong.
Why? Most 9200's I have seen are passively cooled. Surely they can't be kicking out that much heat? CJM
because i can? lol. because i firmly beleive that if i run something at full load, then touch it and burn my fingers, its too hot. the card *was* passively cooled, but i dont have that much airflow in my case. im a sucker for silence and run the two 80mm fans in my pc at 5v. the heatsink was on the bottom of the card when it was mounted in my case, so there was little chance of convection heat exchange. i got worried when i touched the back of the card and the pcb behind my gpu was too hot to touch. i solved it with a little moddage on an arctic cooler, i actually cut the switch off and hard-wired it to the low-speed setting (the card can be passively cooled without the fan at all, the arctic cooler is a very nice passive heatsink too, but its there so i may as well use it) and some coolermaster aluminuim heatsinks on the ramchips (i have those things stuck on *everything* lol). as for the power connector, the 9200 doesnt have an onboard fan power connector, so i just extended the cable and plugged it into the closest mobo fan header. the card would probably run passive (if a little hot) in a normally vented case, but i just didnt have the airflow in that section to cool it adequately. i really can give the arctic cooler my highest reccomendation. it was *easy* to install, and the instructiosn were very clear, even had real piccies (photo's of them fitting it to an actual card). my only problem was that it was not made to fit my card, and i had to file down one corner of the block ever-so-slightly. it went on a treat and has never let me down. its also extremely quiet, even on the higher-speed setting. of all the pc products ive bought, the arctic cooler is one of the few components ive bought more of (i have three of them, all on 9200's with the same mod, i was so impressed with the first one i fitted all my desktops with them.)
I've mounted multiple arctic coolers on 6800s of various flavors... They're all great. Whisper quiet, and pretty easy to mount, too. Just don't loose the little tiny nuts and washers.
I'll take your word for it - not having actually looked at a 9200. It is a bit odd that you have put a cooler on it that is worth half as much as the card! lol I know what you mean about airflow... I have a Zalman on my 6600GT but I daren't run it at 7v because I'm not convinced I have enough airflow in the case and at the moment I can't test it out since there isnt a temp sensor on the card. The only way I would know it was overheating would be when the card melted!
Go for the Zalman VF700-CU all the way man. The latest batches of the artic cooling series are getting poor results and many are dying unfortunately. Most people Ive seen prefer the zalman by miles, much better temps and its actually quieter! Plus it comes with free ram sinks and the fan blows air over the whole card, which gives active cooling to the gpu AND the ram which is good http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/copy_of_Zalman.html Second one down.
I put an arctic cooling on an X800XT (back when you couldn't get them ANYWHERE), no problems at all. Very quiet, in fact that system was probably the quiestest I've ever used (cool n quiet + antec fan-only connectors = about 18dB), quieter in fact than my super-quiet designed rig that I no longer have. And great performance, overclocked the card to XT-PE speeds with absolute ease.
