4670 single slot fan noise.

Hi,

Just built a Shuttle for the wife, and included a 4670 graphics card in there as it seemed to be the fastest single slot card I could find. The problem is that although it has fan speed control, the fan is tiny so it goes from "loud" to "my ears are bleeding" when, really, I would like a quiet setting :D

So, anyone know any Shuttle sized aftermarket coolers, or plan-b a shuttle compatible (ie single slot lowish power) GPU that is quiet?

Shuttle is an SH7 with AMD X2 7750BE cpu and 300W psu. Graphics card is Sapphire 4670.

Plan-C is to see if the 8600GT from her old PC fits in the case as that was nice and quiet but I think the cooler is *just* too big. Also I don't think she will want to go back to a card half the speed of her new one.

edit to add: Fan on 4670 is 2 pin.

The fastest single slot card would be an H4850 TBH.

Hav you tried using Rivatuner as you can reduce the speed to the absolute minimum you need??

Is the graphics card cooler facing the inside or the outside of the case BTW?? If it is facing inside you can use a bigger cooler unless the PCI slot is in use.

The ATI command center says the fan is running at 12%, switching to manual control gives a minimum of 20% fan speed. At 12% it is too noisy. I shall check out Rivatuner tonight when I get back home.

Sadly the cooler faces the outside of the case and the PCIe slot is the outer of the two slots. Seeing the wasted space of the PCI slot is irritating.

This is my first ATI card purchase in years, is the 4850 quieter?

If you have space behind the card you could look for a wraparound heatpipe cooler. I fitted a AeroCool VM-101 to a GF4 TI4200 in a Shuttle SN45G back in the day. Lost the bottom hard drive slot due to the size of it but otherwise it was great.

If the fan is right up against the side of the case then this will probably make it a lot louder (and hotter), have you considered cutting a hole for it?

The HD3850,HD4830 and HD4850 referance cards have similar single slot coolers but they run hot!!

However since the cards do not ramp up the fan they are quite quiet at idle.

Have you looked at using ATI Tray Tools?? You can underclock the card when at idle and use this as the 2D profile and then when it enters a 3D application the normal 3D clocks can be restored. IIRC there are profiles for the fan speed meaning that you can have a very slow fan when in 2D underclocked mode and a faster fan when running at stock 3D speeds.

Had a poke around the web, and the MSI reference design 4850 is in the Shuttle approved list and does look like it has a bigger fan. Not that worried about the noise during gameplay, it is the noise during browsing & ms word that is annoying.

The fan is indeed rather close to the case wall, and that had worried me. Not considered cutting a hole yet, I know someone some years ago that did that for their ATI 9600 AGP card in a shuttle though to good effect. I would prefer to do that with a spare outer case than hack the current one given the system is stable but noisy and it could give the noise an easier route out of the case :)

There is plenty of space in the empty PCI slot behind the card so something like the Thermalright HR-03 might be a possibility if there is room for the pipework to go over the top.

I may just have a winner.

Anyone tried the Thermalright V2 in a Shuttle?

Bah, scratch the V2 sounds like it is too tall :(

Cheers CAT, the answer was indeed Rivatuner. Lowering the minimum rpm setting finally got the fan to a quiet speed. Took a lot of reducing though so I spent ages playing with the machine and watching the temperature graphs before I felt happy with it, but happy I am!

Like I said before you can use ATI Tray Tools to downclock the card during 2D operations and for it to restore normal 3D clocks when you are gaming. I would look at setting the 2D clocks as low as you can get them before artifacting occurs. It should help drop the card temperatures a bit.

The card seemed to be doing a fine job on its own tbh. First thing I did before starting to mess was run the graphing part of RivaTuner which included the core freq which I could see popping up and down under load. Temp was 39 degrees, and lowering the fan from 11 to 3 was at first a worrying drop but the temp only went up to 41 at idle so I am happy with that. alt-tab out of a game and the temp drops like a stone and the fan goes quiet in about half a second.