Cooling of X850Pro - 'outside' air?

[BD]

Hey, all.

Just bought an X850Pro.

I also have an Arctic Cooling unit
(http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.php?idx=61) which, combined with
Arctic Silver, should help a fair bit.

Looking at that fan on the cooling unit, I'm wondering if placing a
round duct over the fan, and porting that duct to a hole cut in the
side of my case would be of any value. It would suck in air directly
from the outside, as opposed to the 'warmer' air that is floating over
the mainboard by the fan. Would that make a difference? Maybe a couple
of degrees?

Also - I can't see any temperature indicator on this card. I _think_ it
has the required chip, but I've not confirmed that visually on the pcb;
I can't see anything in the driver (latest 6.5 Catalyst), nor in
ATITool, which says anything about temperature....

Thanks for all comments.

Cheers,

BD

 

[Clas Mehus]

Hey, all.

Just bought an X850Pro.

I also have an Arctic Cooling unit
(http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.php?idx=61) which, combined with
Arctic Silver, should help a fair bit.

Looking at that fan on the cooling unit, I'm wondering if placing a
round duct over the fan, and porting that duct to a hole cut in the
side of my case would be of any value. It would suck in air directly
from the outside, as opposed to the 'warmer' air that is floating over
the mainboard by the fan. Would that make a difference? Maybe a couple
of degrees?

Also - I can't see any temperature indicator on this card. I _think_ it
has the required chip, but I've not confirmed that visually on the pcb;
I can't see anything in the driver (latest 6.5 Catalyst), nor in
ATITool, which says anything about temperature....

Thanks for all comments.

I don't think it will be worth the effort. I all also depend on the
rest of you configuration.

The thermal-dieod is on-die. You should be able to see the temp
through CCC and some third party tools.

 

[BD]

The thermal-dieod is on-die. You should be able to see the temp

through CCC and some third party tools.

Okay, I'll keep trying to find it. ;-)

 

[First of One]

Looking at that fan on the cooling unit, I'm wondering if placing a
round duct over the fan, and porting that duct to a hole cut in the
side of my case would be of any value. It would suck in air directly
from the outside, as opposed to the 'warmer' air that is floating over
the mainboard by the fan. Would that make a difference?

This obviously depends on your case's existing ventilation. Porting a duct
to the fan, in its ideal construction, would be equal to running the PC with
the side panel open. A simple experiment would be to see if you can
overclock higher with the side panel open than with it closed.

Remember, heat is not a concern unless you are overclocking. This is not a
7900 , it won't overheat on its own at default speeds even in the most
intense games.

Maybe a couple of degrees?

Is a couple of deg worth pursuing? FYI the temp sensor circuitry is never
calibrated to 1 deg precision. It'll be lucky to get it within 5 deg. Its
only function is to prevent damage if the fan seizes or falls off. The
shutdown threshold is over 90C.

Also - I can't see any temperature indicator on this card. I _think_ it
has the required chip, but I've not confirmed that visually on the pcb;
I can't see anything in the driver (latest 6.5 Catalyst), nor in
ATITool, which says anything about temperature....

The thermal diode is on the GPU die, and the X850Pro uses the same R481 core
as the X850XT and XT-PE, so all the hardware is present. However, the
feature may be disabled in the BIOS.

 

[BD]

Remember, heat is not a concern unless you are overclocking. This is not a
7900 , it won't overheat on its own at default speeds even in the most
intense games.

Probably not worth worrying about, then. I don't plan to overclock. The
stock fan is just annoying as it spins up when I get into a game.
Little too loud. That's the main reason for the Arctic Cooler. If I can
get a quieter unit in there, and keep the temps down a bit in the
process, I guess that's good too. ;-)

 

[Steve Evans]

Probably not worth worrying about, then. I don't plan to overclock. The
stock fan is just annoying as it spins up when I get into a game.
Little too loud. That's the main reason for the Arctic Cooler. If I can
get a quieter unit in there, and keep the temps down a bit in the
process, I guess that's good too. ;-)

The arctic coolers are great when it comes to low noise output. Mine
is virtually inaudible when doing desktop stuff, and I have ati tray
tools set to ramp up the fan speed when gaming.
You could always experiment with the side port idea by making a side
panel out of cardboard and making holes in that before cutting up your
precious case. It's also worth noting that it's not just the core, but
also the ram chips and sinks on the back of the board that require a
bit of cool air around them.

-
steve AT steveevans DOT org
-

 

[pigdos]

I just recently installed a higher flowing front, intake fan (a 120mmx38 fan
to replace a 90mmx25) in my case. It dropped the max GPU load temp of my
X850xt by 2 to 5 degrees celsius and I was able to increase the core and
memory overclock at the same time (5 mhz). I already use ATItool to force
the fan speed to 100% for any GPU temp over 41 degrees celsius. It's pretty
obvious to me at this point that the stock cooling solution for the X850
series cards is barely adequate. I'm going to look into getting an Arctic
Cooler 5 rev. 2 w/my next paycheck.

What I'm worried about are the reports that the Arctic Cooler 5 rev. 2 will
burn out the X850XT fan controller unit. Has anyone out there experienced
this problem?

I also want to say thanks to First for all his help.

 

[First of One]

What I'm worried about are the reports that the Arctic Cooler 5 rev. 2
will burn out the X850XT fan controller unit. Has anyone out there
experienced this problem?

Googling doesn't return any reports of Arctic Cooling fans burning out the
fan controller.
Can you give me a link?

Conceivably the ATi Silencer's exposed fan can stall if a wire falls into
it, whereas ATi's fully enclosed leaf blower is immune to foreign objects.
However, the risk is no higher than for other fans in the PC.

The HIS X850XT IceQ II appears to use the same cooler as original equipment:
http://www.hisdigital.com/html/product_ov.php?id=167&view=yes

I also want to say thanks to First for all his help.

NP.

 

[pigdos]

First, the only place I'm certain I've read about this problem is at Newegg.
Newegg has hundreds of reviews of the Arctic Cooler 5 rev. 2 and some of
them mentioned the fan burning out. One thing to look up would be the fan
click problem with Arctic Coolers and X850's. ATItool mentions the problem
because is has a setting that I think addresses this issue: "do not change
PWM base frequency X850". I'm not sure now if the problem was the Arctic
Cooler burning out the ATI X850 series fan controller or the X850's burning
out the fan on the Arctic Coolers. As a matter of fact I think it's the
latter problem.