Best cooling for ATI HD4850

[Big.Wayne]

There is no right or wrong here but remember to pay attention to which way you have your ram heatsinks mounted as you want them to receive as much airflow as possible.

This is how I mounted mine of an older X1950XT/Accelro S1 + Fan, in this scenario the air from the fan would blow down on the GPU then out 'across' the ramsinks.

[Bbq]

Load temperature. Call of duty 4, been playing all day.

Thermalright HR-03 original, with a yate loon d12sl12 and zip ties.

[Cecil]

CTM Audi, needs registration on that forum :|

Crap, didnt think about that, updated with tinypic links.

[keiths]

Do ramsinks cool better than the stock heatsink? I know it's some more cutting, but I wonder why not cut just enough for the water block to fit, leaving the stock heatsink to keep cooling memory.

[Clemmaster]

I encountered same troubles with RAM sink, just cut it with dremel. AC S1 is a... cheap heatsink, you'll have to adjust things so that they fit well. I did the same for PWM heatsink but I couldn't use the standart thermal tape and use arctic cermic but it doesn't touch the PWM chip well... I need to find where to buy this kind of thermal pad such as those you get with the stock heatsink...

[SmaKKed]

USing a duo orb on m 4850 , dont know what temps were like with stock cooler never tried it after reading they were high. Mine idles at around 36 and under load is abotu 49 degrees

[古強者死神]

Why is everybody posting pictures of there "awesome" aftermarket coolers with gpu-z under a 0-2% load?

That tells us nothing, thats just idle temps in 2d (xp) or low 3d (vista aero) mode. Go download ATI Tool and run the artifact tester, this will push the gpu in to 3dmode and 98-100% load, this is a great test of both your stability of an overclock and your load temps.


Most people are suffering high temps with the stock coolers due to the awful stock fan speeds. It maxes out at like 22% under load. I suppose the idea could have been two fold.

1.) Keep the noise down to near silent
or
2.) Keep the temps high to limit overclocking

Ether way since you can manually override fan speed via the profiles xml file boosting my 4850's fan speed to 30% dropped idle to under 50, and load to like 70's. For more graphic intensive games like crysis I created a 2nd profile that has the gpu overclocked to 675/1050 and boost the fan speed to 60% and I turn it on before gaming, the cards become abit loud but I do not hear them in the game and they stay nice and cool. At this point it would be much cheaper and better to just get some 120mm fans to point at the voltage regulators to drop those temps as they are sort of hot and keep the stock coolers.

It looks like many of you are not getting better performance with these after market coolers its just that you have not taken the time to increase the broken fan speed on the stock solutions. There are some MUCH better coolers than stock, but they cost too much to warrent in my book. (got the cards for 150$ each on sale, id be damned to pay 40-70$ for a cooler when the cards run fine with the stock coolers, only in the event of heavy volt moding would it be worth it)

Keep in mind my temps are high even because I have a P182 SE case, one intake for the upper chamber and its blocked by a dust filter & the dust filter door & the case door. If I open the doors and remove the filter I drop 5c idle and 10c load instantly.

[Snake Eyes]

im sure that ATI will release a better driver soon to fix this problem with the fan speed. bug them enough and they get around to doing things :P

[jpcastro]

hy

already posted in the 4800 thread but it fits good in this one also.

mounted a Zalman VF1000 on a shappire 4850:




idle with fan at minimum speed





full with ATI tool running and fan at minimum speed




ambient temp 25\26º and did not pass 48\49º so far
very happy now with good temps and no noise at all with this fan speed.

[古強者死神]

Wow those are great temps, esp for the voltage regulators. Now overclock it already! (and try the artifact tester instead of the 3dview)

[Snake Eyes]

damn....some good results there and that cooler I can find where i stay

How much bigger is that cooler compared to the stock one jpcastro??

Im still wondering if i should buy a after market cooler or just wait for better drivers

[jpcastro]

Wow those are great temps, esp for the voltage regulators. Now overclock it already! (and try the artifact tester instead of the 3dview)

yes there is a "problem" with the voltage\power zone the vf1000 dosen´t bring any additional ramsink like the HR03 gt for example.

but so far i already tested 4\5 games and the temps dont pass 48º wich means that the cooler is great and the voltage regulators are not in danger

PS: your right dident run scan for artifacts but i´ll post soon more results.

damn....some good results there and that cooler I can find where i stay

How much bigger is that cooler compared to the stock one jpcastro??

Im still wondering if i should buy a after market cooler or just wait for better drivers

hy

the cooler is bigger of course but is possible to use in crossfire, thats one of the reasons for buying it because i´ll gonna add a 4870 soon with another vf1000

for me low noise and good temps are essential so is always a good investement, with stockcooler even with the fan at 35\40% the card achives 80º and that´s to much for rest of the PC.

and the results were made with the fan in silent mode, gonna make more tests with games and scan for artifacts with the fan at more higher speeds.

regards

[Robilar]

1.Replace the tim.
2. Unplug the fan and plug it into a fan controller using a 3pin extension cable.

That's for the most part free if you have extra stuff lying around, got me to the low 50's on idle.
And the second option doesn't even void a warranty.

The TR Hr-03 GT as mentioned above would a be a complete replacement that does great. Not exactly cheap though...

the hd4870 uses a 4 pin connector... too bad.

[mouawad]

my 4850 crossfire on Maximus X38 in a U2-UFO

can be done