Passive cooling a GF3 Ti500

[NRG = mc²]

I'm thinking of getting rid of my ageing GF2MX card and replacing it with a GF3 Ti500, in particular the Hercules 3D Prophet III Ti500 which I can get hold of at a particularly cheap price.

I'd like to replace the heatsink/fan combo with a passive heatsink so as to avoid noise. This is particularly important since the card appears to come with the ThermalTake Blue Orb cooler on the GPU and my experience with them has been less than great (they tend to get noisy and die after a couple of months).

Has anyone managed to pasively cool a GF3 Ti500? How many watts are they supposed to dissipate?

Anyone used the Zalman GPU cooler? They say its not recomended for use with these cards unless you use a fan with it but surely all that surface area of the Zalman heatsink should be sufficient to replace a Blue Orb with its fan?

I've also got a Zalman chipset cooler lying around but I guess thats too small to use without a fan.

Anyone?

 

[Groltz]

I would think that the GF3 Ti500 makes too much heat to dissipate with passive cooling. This guess comes from owning and using third party cooling methods on both an original GF3 and a GF3 Ti200.

I would suggest installing a ThermalTake Crystal orb on the card with Arctic Silver III compound. After that, install a rheostat in series with the CORB's power lead which would permit dialing the fan down to a tolerable noise level. If you are not gaming or running 3D intensive apps the fan should be able to run quite a bit slower than default while still letting the card shed enough heat to avoid artifacting and lock-ups.

---Steve

 

[NRG = mc²]

I guess I could just use the spare Zalman fanmate controller for the existing Blue Orb - but I was after something fanless.

I cant seem to find any data on the power output of the particular GPU - that would give me an idea of what to expect.

I think Clocker had used the Zalman fanless or am I mistaken?

 

[Groltz]

I don't have the power output numbers either but believe that the GF3 radiates too much heat for passive cooling.

The Crystal Orb is better quality than the Blue orb, I have used both. It will remove more heat from the GPU at a given fan speed than the Blue orb. They are not expensive, either.

Clocker used passive cooling on a GF2.

 

[NRG = mc²]

I already have a Zalman flower heatsink on my CPU and as you may know, the fan bracket can accomodate a second fan for the graphics card.

I guess I'll just have to use a second fan along with the Zalman GPU heatsink - if I'm going to use a fan it might as well be a 120mm silent one

I was just hoping I could get rid of the fan all together.

Thanks anyway