HD 4850 - Better Cooling/Better Performer!
I personally love the silence, manage to build a silent system but my new HD 4850 ruined my plans so I had to find a fix for that. Silence is just one of the problems for this card straight out of the box. The temperatures go so high that in crashes my games after 20 minutes of play (Cod 4, Crysis, The Witcher). My logic blamed the temperatures but others with a similar product blamed the drivers abd that got me thinking. :confused:
http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/9...e001dj6by7.jpg
Anyway, I wasn't gonna wait for a miracle, I'll make it happen. And with those word in my mind I searched for better alternative for cooling my new card which has a faulty cooling - and that's not just my opinion. :shakes:
Since I already have a case with good airflow, I put My fate in my old cooler (Accelero S1. Rev2) + a couple of RAMsinks like Zerotherm ZH100: and a AC Turbo Module
http://www.zerotherm.net/eng/images/img/ZH100/b01.jpg
http://www.arctic-cooling.com/pics/tmMain_470.jpg
And now for the results:
Step 1 - I removed the faulty cooling and put those RAMsinks on PWM/RAM. I have to Arrange them in certain position so the heatsink would fit just right. I even covered the parts uncovered by the original cooler.
http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/5629/fegl0.jpg
http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/1...4703ef9.th.jpg
http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/8...9457ux5.th.jpg
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/5535/11fo8.th.jpg
Step 2 - Installed the Heatsink, as shown in the next pictures:
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/7...7139tx3.th.jpg
http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/2...7882qz8.th.jpg
Now it's ready for passive cooling, but I adeed the Turbo Module for my internal peace and of course: better OC results if I needed a litle boost of performance. That takes as to Step 3 - AC Turbo Module:
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/6182/11ed3.th.jpg
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/3139/12zk8.th.jpg
Step 4 - not that the beast it's all dressed up it's time to put it where it belongs:
http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/6...5631ja6.th.jpg
All fans or connected to the front fan controller (Zalman ZM-MFC1 Plus Black ). It's all silence related, but as you will see shortly, even a silent solution can be a good performer. Here's the complete installation and my idea of a good air flow for a cooler and better performing system (let's not forget the silence - as mentioned repetitively above):
http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/9990/10jx9.th.jpg
The final results:
Idle as in the first picture:
http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/9...ture001hd7.jpg
The temperatures in Load after doing some OC:
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9...re003ffuy9.jpg
Ok, that got me +1000 points in 3D Mark 2006 but that's far from my main interest.
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/1...02ffim6.th.jpg
It's cooler, performs better (closer to HD 4870) and no more crashes. Same games, same driver (8.7) and after 3 - 6 hours in different games my system didn't crash, yet before it use to crash after 20 minutes. Overall I'm more then happy with this results. Hope this helps other people to deal with the cooling problems of HD 4850. :up:
LE:I used Noctua NT-H1 as thermal paste. :cool:
