Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: ricwis on February 22, 2006, 09:00:09 pm
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My family gave me a great birthday present ...Aperture. I have a 2 year old dual G5 2.0, plenty of RAM at 2.5 Gig, but the older 9800 Pro ATI video card with only 64 Meg of Video Ram. I decided to upgrade the video card since Aperture is very card intensive. The G5 is extremely quiet and I very rarely hear fan noise and the box sits right next to me. I like that.
The first card I tried was the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac addition. This card requires a separate power hookup for the fan (note the card I have does not have a fan). When I installed the card, my G5 was no longer quiet and the fan noise was very annoying after a short time. I sent it back and got the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Special Addition. This card has a fan but no power hookup requirement. This was worse the the previous card as the fan noise had a high pitched whine to it as well as the whirr. I sent it back and put the old card back in.
There is one more card avaialbe in the ATI Radeon X800XT with a fan but no additonal power requirements. I am hesitant to try this. Does anyone have experience with this card and its contribution to noise? In all the reviews I have read on these cards, no reviewer mentions fan noise. With a machine like the G5 this makes a huge difference.
Thanks for any help, advice, or ideas on this.
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Just peel the fan off and replace it with a Zalman.
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Rich,
I have an ATI X800XT video card on one of my G5. I'm very sensitive to noise and the OEM fan on the X800XT Mac Edition was a pain in the lower back. Sometimes it rattled like an old fridge. After 3 3 days I decided to do something. I missed the original 9600.
So I took the plunge and installed a Zalman VF 700 Cu fan. Installation was really easy and took about 30 minutes. The result was above my expectation as I had to use a flashlight to see if the fan was working. I've done the swap more than 6 months ago and the Zalman fan is still silent.
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Rich,
You can find "fan" related step-by-step articles on HardMac.com website.
For a cooler ATI Radeon X800XT (http://www.hardmac.com/articles/52/)
How to silence a Radeon 9800 Pro (http://www.hardmac.com/articles/33/)
How to silence a GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL (http://www.hardmac.com/articles/42/)
Quiet NVidia7800 GT (http://www.hardmac.com/articles/54/)
How to cool a Radeon 9600XT (http://www.hardmac.com/articles/34/)
Read all the articles as you will find interesting details (such as the rear brace).
HTH and do not hesitate to write if you need more info.
PS: On my Mac I used Arctic Silver thermal paste instead of the one included in the kit and I used the lower voltage so I get the quietest fan (inaudible).
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Turn up your radio. That will be easier than adding a cooling fan to the video card.
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I found it to be pretty quick. The only issue I had was when I turned away for a moment and found my cat sitting neatly on the card chewing the molex connector when I turned back.
(I have to think the whole house humidifier did wonders in keeping the static down.)
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Thanks for all the input.
I ended up getting the X800XT card this morning and installed it. It is much quieter than the other cards and is really fast. Being a chicken at heart when it comes to customization work, I decided to get this card knowing I would have to do the fan install if the noise was more than I was willing to live with.
I notice on this card that the fan speed is variable and only revs up when there is a heavier video load.
Did the cat have an anti-static bracelet on or in some other way remove the charge from its body?