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Thread: Cooler for a non-standard 7900GT

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    Cooler for a non-standard 7900GT

    I have a Gainward Bliss 7900GT Golden Sample which has, I think, a non-standard layout for a 7900GT.

    After two years the cooler has become so hopelessly clogged up with horrible that I have to clock it down to 400mhz just to avoid artefacts in WoW, and it's become progessively worse at more intensive stuff like Crysis and Half-Life Ep 2 as it gets more covered in dirt. Having had a good long look at it I'm not convinced that, if I take the HSF off to clean it, I'll be able to get it back on.

    So I want to get a replacement HSF just in case that happens (and I want to know that there's something available before I try to clean it) but again, with the non-standard design, I don't know if I can just get an ordinary cooler and slap it on.

    So: does anyone know if an ordinary Zalman cooler (or similar in the £10-£20 range) can be fitted to this card? I don't need serious overclocking (this PC will probably be replaced within the year, or whenever Ep 3 comes out) so if you have a recommendation for a cheap HSF that will do fine, please do

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    p5-
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    Re: Cooler for a non-standard 7900GT

    Ah, I once bought a gainward bliss 7900gs golden sample from ebay which I believe uses the same pcb as it's 7900gt counterpart.

    It arrived with a zalman vf700 cooler on it. However it was able to rock and move left to right. Basically I took it off in an attempt to at least fill in the gap (as it was rocking I could see a gap between the gpu and the rubbery shim that gainward put on their 79xx cards) with new AS5.

    After doing all that it booted up with artifacts. Returned it to the guy who gave me some of my money back as we weren't sure who was in the wrong.

    Not sure if it helps really. In short though, perhaps a zalman is possible if the rubbery shim is removed first (the shim gainward use creates a small gap between top of shim and top of gpu). Unsure if any of the other zalman's have the same mounting as the vf700, i'd hazard a guess that the cheapest one is the vf700 though and the others might possibly be out of your budget.

    If it were me though, considering the experience I had with that combo, I'd probably avoid the vf700 on that particular pcb.

    A quick google of "gainward 7900gt bliss dust" brought this page up, with this in it:

    Good card to start with, very nice performance, but after a few months the intake fan got clogg with dust and the GPU temp rose over 130+deg didn't realise it was too hot, untill too late, i didn't think you'ld need to check the temp on a 3month old card, anyways cleaned it out back down to 40 deg, but the card is dammaged and very very buggy. not very happy thats 190 pound down the drain.


    Worth noting in case your gpu did ever get too hot.

    Not sure what i'm doing up at 2:50 replying to an in depth gfx card heatsink issue when i should be up for uni tomorrow at 9, but good luck anyway.

    EDIT: After all that I realised the gainward 7900GS hasn't got the same cooler as the gainward 7900GT. Like you said though, it does have a non-reference pcb to standard 7900GT's.
    Last edited by p5-; 28-01-2008 at 04:14 AM. Reason: got it wrong!

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    Re: Cooler for a non-standard 7900GT

    Thanks, that's really helpful.

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