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Super cooled graphics cards aren't quiet?


martianmr

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I've been building PCs for my own amusement, mostly gaming and surfing since ... well my first proper 3d card was a 3dfx Voodoo II. Most of these I've been pretty happy with, the only expections have been a few "super cooled" cards, generally sporting large fans or copper pipes that I thought would be nice because they would be super quiet - generally my wife is asleep when I'm using these things and quietness is a good thing for me. So as I listen to my latest, an EVGA GFX 780 with an ACX cooler whirring away I now think I realise my mistake. The highly cooled cards aren't made for quiet PC use, they're made for the sort of folks who want to get that little bit extra cooling so that they can overclock their card and get an extra 2 FPS out of the latest shooter without lightly toasting their GPU - I used to be one of those people. Now I often just want to surf quietly and this sort of thing just drives me mad as the idle speed is way to high.

So, anyone else have the same experience? Or would you disagree? Any interesting insights?

If I'm right - anyone in the same situation looking for a quiet card for normal PC use as well as gaming - I recommend you get a reference card and stay away from extreme cooling or you're going to have a bad time :courage:.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have the Nvidia Gainward GTX 680 4 GB Edition, it seems very quiet to me. My Noctua NH-D14 CPU cooler on the other hand, makes a lot of noise :(

it's quite hard to build a silent desktop computer which is air cooled

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  • 3 months later...
  • 4 months later...

Well in air cooling fans can still have high cooling abilities but be quieter, the quietest ones that still cool well are simply the large bladed fans. As they use larger fans, they can get the same cooling at a lower rpm and lower Decibel level for much of the same CFM. If you are running the gpus stock and they dont get overly hot at stock fan speed I would try a multitude of apps to find one that may give fan control. Why not try EVGA PrecisionX should allow control of the fans. My brothers pc I put together and picked his parts fpr actually had very poor automatic fan profile setup. It would allow upper 90s before coming anywhere near fast or max fans and the system would safwty shut down. It is a EVGA GTX780Ti Superclocked edition, my brother uses stock as well but I did set his power target and temp limit up so he would surely get his stock boost clocks in games. I had to make a much more agressive fan profile to keep his cards happy and cool. What I would recommend is you do the same but orient towards a curve that allows higher temps for the same rpm on the fans and perhaps even maybe adjust your minimum fans speeds at low temps so its quieter idle or under light use. My brother didnt even have a ACX cooler so you should easily be able to use lower fan speeds at different temps to get much quiter use. I hope you get something going as you are better off with better cooling system like you have now and toned down versus a less efficient stock cooler. You have a cooler that at the same cooling capacity of a stock cooler would in fact run quiter in most cases. You will be much happier too because you will have created your own setup unique to your needs.

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  • 5 months later...

It depends on cooling system and the card itself. If it has good non-reference cooling and/or relatively low power consumption then it should be ok. My previous HD 7950 with windforce 3x cooling was overclocked from 900 to 1250 MHz, but nevertheless was cool and quiet.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I would recommend to use an aftermarket cooler, like the accelero or Alpenföhn Peter. By the later one you can replace the fans if they are still to loud, maybe with a pair of Be quiet or Noiseblocker fans.

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Obviously if someone decides to go for the Accelero Hybrid, make sure to get the older model as the newer one has some design flaws which cause reliability issues and cause lower cooling performance.

Water cooling will still be the better option for cooling any computer where low noise is a factor.

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  • 2 months later...

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