Cooling a x1900xt..

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Awchoo

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Jan 15, 2006
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Have of my new rig is in the mail and i was wondering odds and ends i forgot to gather with my main purchase and came across some VGA coolers...

Im wondering those of you that have x1900xt, is the stock cooler adequate or does the card run hot? does it sound like a jet engine when the fan gets on high?

those that have replaced your vga fan...what did you go with? and are you pleased? I saw some reviews no the Zalman VF700 but cannot find if it is compatible with the x1900xt series.
 
The X1800XT/X1900XT/X1900XTX uses the same cooler. It's in my view, a good cooler as it sucks air in over the gpu and expels it to the outside. The trick for this cooler is simply to have pretty decent case temps and more importantly good bottom front airflow into the case and if possible directly to your card (120mm low rpm fan would be great). This will keep your temps under 90C. It sounds like alot, but then again no one knows the thermal max we can go to.

My X800XT ran up to 90+, and I played it like that for quite some time with no problems, so I guess that if your are in the 90's then it ought to be okayish.

My setup includes 3 silent fans, 80mm and 2x 120mm. The 80mm sucks air in at the bottom front and to super impose this I use a 120mm just after the HDD rack. This 120mm covers some part of the intake to my card, and the combination of the 80mm and 120mm in series allows my to run case temps of 25C max regardless of case temp after heat build up. The other 120mm fan just sucks out air at the back (as would normally be found by the cpu). I also have a very neat cable layout, and this helps alot.

To keep temps under 85C, I use ATiTool to at 64%/68% fan speed at at this speed you can control temps at any temp, most of the times. So setting 64%/68% at 75 will keep the card at 75, IF you have good case temps minus temp build up.

Hope this helps!
 
thnx for the reply Vok. Im getting the thermaltake armor case which seems to have adequate airflow. I've heard that the artic coolers are good b/c they toss air outside the case. Ive read that the zalman are good b/c the fan cools off ram sinks as well as the chip since it is so large.

I'm mainly looking to avoid the card sounding like a vacuum cleaner, which i hear on the high setting, it does. I know keeping the case temps down will help keep the card fan at a lower setting, but there will be times that puppy kicks in.
 
I never thought I'd say this, but a good and solid case can make a huge difference with gcard sound. Also, I use sound supressors on all my fan screws (case wise). I guess that paying so much for a gcard, only to remove the fan, void the waranty, all for the sake of cooling and sound doesn't fit well with me. It boils down to personal preference. So I'd rahter spend a week to work on case cooling and the elimination of case fan sound, than going for a 3rd party cooler for the gcard 😀
 
..same coolers are ati reference .....those are efective enough..they run at 100% at sistem start up and after post they came down to a decent noise level ... depending of your case and position you can hardly hear it after boot up........i`ve run many games like fear and doom 3 at high settings ..and after one hour or two of gaming the cooler was still quiet..although i could notice a speed increase.....i think it never got over 25% even after i run cod 2 an entire day.......ati tool can configure your cooler at any speed between 20%(or 25%) and 100% when it gets really loud.........HIS does a very good job with their ICE-Q coolers they are very quiet but more expensive...my choice was to buy a high end graphic card with ati reference cooler (ICE-Q was more expensive).....indeed i can say the noise level is higher than any card i had .... but after a while i got used .. it only makes noise at start-up and then it`s ok ....i guess that`s the price you pay for a gaming monster that is
with ati reference cooler the temperature is between 30(or even 25) at start up and 50..70 in full load (after few hours in cod2).....i used overdrive to monitor the temperature and also ati tool .... i also took good care to ventilate my case and sleeve the cables real nice......it took me an entire day to arrange the cables in the case, i also used clips to tie the cables (i must admit the Hiper (UK) cables are nice done) .... there are no cables blocking the air flow and the sistem is quite cool (except for the psu of course witch delivers the power :lol: )
 
i have a x1900xt with stock cooling. During long hours of playing BF2 it can reach temps of about 70-80. As for the noise, there is not much. Seems fine to me!
 
Get the ATI Silencer from Arctic Cooling whenever you can. I got one for my old card, an X850XT PE, and it lowered temps by over 20 degrees and was totally silent, as the name implies. In addition to actually working, they also make your card look totally badass. Although I am sure you could not fit two of these on a crossfire setup. I will defiantely purchase their Silencer for the X1900 series.
 
My 1800 gives that turbine sound when I cold boot, but quickly backs down to a much lower tone. You may have to go throught the catalyst setup once before this works, I don't know.

A couple of case fans can easily make the gpu noise a thing of the past.

I have a couple of case fans, one pules air in and blows it on both the graphics cards and the cpu, and the other expells it out the top. They completely drown out the gpu. :lol:
 
I have an X1900XT with an Arctic Cooling Accelero X2.... Compared to the stock cooler, the Accelero cooler is silent, but in terms of what i hear at the moment, i can't hear it over my other fans. Also, on the stock cooler, i came out of a game and 3DMark2006 with the GPU a hot 75C... not good, but the Accelero managed to keep the beast between 60-67C on full load for an extended period of time (a good ol' online gaming session, as in DoD: Source with HDR and A. AA and HQ AF, for about an hour or so...), significantly cooler, and with the noise reduction on top of that, it is well worth it. Want to cool your X1900XT, go Arctic Cooling... they are the best air-cooling solutions for the card before going water-cooling....
 
I only hear my stock fan rev up for about 2 seconds at boot up. All other times I cant even hear the thing. I had to put my hand on the back to feel the air being pushed out a few times b/c it was so low. However, my temps shot up to 65ish celsius just from playing WoW at max res/detail...not even an FPS. It idles at ~45 C. =/

I got the Zalman vf700 and some OCZ copper heatsinks which I plan on slapping on this weekend after I do some more strenuous testing on the card.
 
Yeah, I'm running stock settings too...no OCing. I think the card would fry if i ran FEAR or another graphic intensive game. And I know its not my case as the airflow is unreal in it.

Most likely will slap my Zalaman/sinks and some AC5 on it after I get my color issue resolved. =/
 
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