Custom passive cooler on a 4550

Hi,

I have a XFX 4550 that had a fan to cool the GPU. The fan was really noisy and I wanted to use the card in a HTPC. I took the fan off and attached a new passive cooler. The cooler is metal part of this, but cut down to size.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/...olerBoxtop.jpg

With the passive cooler, the GPU temperature is about 60 degress C whilst watching a movie. The passive cooler is hot to touch (of course) and I am worried that it will cause problems for the rest of the pc.

What temperature would you expect a passively cooled gpu run at?

Thanks

Tricky to say as it depends on the ambient temperature within the case, but from a quick google, I would expect about what you are getting at full load and I am slightly worried that just watching a movie it should be cooler than that but still this implies that as long as you only watch movies you will be fine:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...assive/27.html

I have only had passive Nvidia boards in the past, and I remember they went sky high (like 90C) but then they did also tend to fail in the end :(

Overall I don't believe there is such a thing as a passively cooled video card, you either depend on the fan on the card or the fans on the case/psu. Some passive video cards have heatpipes to the back of the card to catch some cooling off the CPU fan. Still, plenty of passive 4550 cards out there and you only have about 20W to get rid of, so I am sure some careful airflow will sort it out. Failing that, a 92 or 120mm fan and a fan controller to keep it at really low RPM shouldn't cost that much.

Thanks for your help.

The temperatures were taken with the case lid off, so the temp in the case will be higher.

I tried blowing a fan against it and the temps were unsurprisingly lower. I have a slim line htpc case, so need to find a quiet 60mm fan.

If you have space you could always get an exhaush fan that sits below the card and sucks the hot air out of the case.

Like this one
http://www.shinyhardware.co.uk/prods...od.asp?pid=910

I think ebuyer still stock them or look on ebay. If its to load then just mod the cable to run on 7v instead of 12v :)

If you can fit a full height PCI card then an exhaust blower is definitely the way to go. I used to have a "passive" 5200FX - if I tried to do anything that put 3D load on it it would lock up almost instantly. I installed a blower in the slot immediately below it to suck the hot air away, and was able to game happily for hours on end!

If your case can fit 60mm fans above the IO section then it sounds like you have room for full-height expansion cards, so you should be able to fit one of these. In fact, since you have > 100 posts why not stick a "wanted" in the wanteds forum - you never know someone on the forum might have a spare one they're willing to get rid of cheap ;)