My Custom Arctic Cooler 5 with pics!

[Andrew LB]

A couple days ago, i bought myself a shiny new ATI X800XL video card and of course.... had to get a better cooler for it. Wanting something that exhausted air out the back of the case, i opted for the Arctic Silencer 5 ATI v2.0. I installed the cooler, and after about 30 minutes of running a brand new Arctic Silencer 5 ATI v2.0, i heard a loud pop and the computer crashed. After some trouble shooting, i realized my brand new X800XL didn't fry.... but the smell was from the fan on the aftermarket cooler. Considering i had to add a custom duct to lengthen the exhaust so it would reach the rear of the case beause Arctic Cooling didn't mention this cooler is for a PCI-Express card and too short for an AGP card.... my warranty was toast.

So i removed the cooler from the card, ripped out the fan guts, took a dremel to it and with a little modding, grinding, and glueing.... I added a Panaflo 80mm U1A ultra high output case fan to the top of the video card cooler. The fan is rated at 46.9CFM 38.2dBA.

I'm currently running my x800xl at 460/1100 and using the ATI tool, the GPU and Environment temps are both 36'c. Using Asus Probe, my motherboard temp is 30'c and the CPU is 35'c. I'm going to push it higher soon.

I ran three loops of 3dmark 2003 and the CPU hit 41'c, case hit 34'c, and the video card temps were only 48/43 (GPU/Environment).

The amount of air blowing out the back of the case is pretty amazing. Before the Arctic Cooler's "blower" fan fried... i could barely feel air exhausting the back of the case. With my panaflo 80mm fan on the cooler, the amount of air blowing out feels to have increased about 10 fold.

The panaflo is connected to my fan controller so i can turn it down at night or when browsing the net... and cranked up to full blast while gaming.

All in all, the modification was an amazing success and I feel my card now has adequate cooling for my future voltage mods which i'm starting to research.

Here are some pictures of the final product.

http://www.kalionzes.com/panacooler/panacooler1.jpg

http://www.kalionzes.com/panacooler/panacooler2.jpg

http://www.kalionzes.com/panacooler/panacooler3.jpg

[Zyon]

i love DIY cooling.

would it not be more effective if you had a fan bracket without a fan between the 2. or find some other way of moving the air. because it looks like a lot of the air is obstructed by the bracket. so if you could raise (lower?) the fan so it isnt so much an issue

[Andrew LB]

You mean something to make the panaflo fan sit higher off the hole in the clear plastic shroud where the 70mm fan that came with the cooler used to be?


I was looking into a different method of cooling the memory on the underside of the card (non GPU side). The big L shaped piece of metal isn't the best solution i've seen but i have two side intakes blowing directly onto it.

I'm goinig to toy around with taking it off and using a different way of holding the cooler onto the card and adding ramsinks instead of the very weird pads the cooler comes with that sit between the ram chips and the bracket and the cooler itself.

[bacon]

before and after temps dude?

im guna try it on mine, before i buy a zalman gou cooler

[Navig]

Don't know if it'll fit to the end of the silencer, but this would probably push air more appropriately:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v363/navig/P4%20Rig/Heatsinks/EvercoolAC.jpg

This is the blower section from an evercool pcac (http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=36_145&products_id=1503&osCsid=48709938c31205c484d9364d50f6a83f).

Altho your current fan looks like a real nice fit.

navig

[Achilles17]

Whoa, nice looking blower mod there. That would be more efficent, but anything is an improvement over the stock silencer fan.

[jrw]

NICE!

I have a spare ATI Silence laying around somewhere, maybe I should try this.

Thanks for sharing. :)