Hi guys,

I'm going to suggest you what may very well be the most effective air cooling which you can currently buy :)
EDIT: this works for G9x cards, but doesn't fit the newer GTX 2xx ones. See next post for more (currently not very complete) information.

The initial condition:
- I had a 9800GTX+ with the stock cooler
- it ran at 50°C /30% fan at idle, very silent
- in 3D Mark it got distractingly loud
- with GPU-Grid it was at 70°C / 60% fan and was louder than my PC (Q6600@3GHz) and laptop together
- the sound was just rushing air, no high pitched whine like in the 3D Mark, but too loud for me

What I did:
- bought an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev. 2 for 15€
- mounting took some time, had to be careful with my new baby
- very minor incompatibility: had to cut it once near the slot bracket, because some strange plastic thing connects the card with the bracket for the 2nd slot
- attached 2 120 mm fans with cable ties
- I chose Arctic Cooling fans, because they're cheap, silent enough at lower RPMs and I can control them via PWM

The result:
- pictures 1 and 2
- now the card folds GPU-Grid at 53°C (24°C room) and my PC is as silent as it was before :)

Random thoughts:
- generally the Arctic Cooling TIM is surprisingly good
- however, exchanging it (e.g. for AS5) may improve temperatures a little further
- some small chips of the voltage regulation circuitry were contacted by the stock fan, now they don't have coolers any more
- I'm not sure how much the 70°C stock cooler actually cooled them
- now one of the fans is just a few cm away from them.. I guess it will be fine
- if you want to play it safe you may attach RAM sinks to them, which you'd have to get seperately

All in all I'm very pleased with this modification!

MrS

Edit: spelling
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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

For GTX 2xx cards there's a test of a powerful, silöent and high priced solution here, the Accelero Xtreme GTX 280. The PWMs did get quite hot during the test, but Furmark is much more demanding than GPU-Grid (and possibly any other real world CUDA app) and still more demanding than games.. so I don't think this is a show stopper.

The Scythe Musashi in its newer version and the Thermalright HR-03 GTX are also compatible. Might be nice to have a comparison of all three.

MrS
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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

All that is for is to hold a liquid cooling waterblock ... :)

114°C is way too much! I think at 120 or 125°C the driver should perform an emergency shut down to avoid destroying the chip. I suppose you card is passively cooled? Otherwise the fan is either defect or already running at 100%.

And, as Klat already said, your card is too slow for GPU-Grid and you'll probably have troubles to meet the deadline. You may want to take a look at GPU-Seti, they can make better use of slower cards. You'd still need to improve cooling, though.

MrS
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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

- 50W extra power use for the compressor
- currently only for CPU, no GPU mounting found on HP
- cooling a GPU or several would require a much larger compressor and heat exchanger anyway
- "rough" english, sounds chinese-style

-> not recommended

MrS
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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

Air Compression!
Kool idea ;)
Pity all the manufakturers are going bust.

I was almost using a GTX 250 (yeah I’m lying Nvidia, its a 9800GTX+ but in a new shiny box) until I succumb to the evil charm of another sort of fake, the GTX 260 (196). Anyhow, the 250/9800GTX+ has a well designed fan and grill for air flow, but has a big metal plate stuck to the back of it! So the top/front is nice and cool but the back is roasting!

If I decide to keep it, I will either stick a heatsink to the back and put it in a case with a side fan, or superglue a slim line heatsink and fan to it (with some compound in the middle).

Except if you're concerned with electricity cost.

MrS
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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

Unfortunately my MSI Mobo did not like the second card (only a 9800GT) and duely popped (Amps perhaps). New board on route, but with a corsair 550 PSU. You cant beat a 5 year warenty on a PSU. The PSU is also more energy efficient, about 86% normal load (240V). I dont like paying for electric. This will allow me to run an 8800GT + a 9800GT (or the GTX 250). I dont fancy paying for a Corsair 750 and the electric for two GTX250's.

Yes, crazy. And you forgot one thing: the socks have to be old, but freshly taken off! So they're still wet.. the more, the better. Now the hot air enters, evaporates the liquid and thus cools down. The problem is that this process is limited by the speed you can provide new fluid soaked socks and the relative humidity in your room.
If the socks get dry all you do is build up the heat within your computer, which increases the power consumption of chips (and thus generates even more heat) and at the end of the day the evil thermodynamics dictate that the heat has to be transferred into the room anyway ;)

MrS
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Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002

From experience I would actually expect your total energy consumption to stay about the same or perhaps drop!

The cost of running one CPU fan is often more than one running one CPU fan plus one or possibly two case fans, especially with a big GPU inside the case. This is because the cost of running one CPU fan very fast is more than running 2 or 3 fans fairly slowly. It's like a car, take it over 60mph and you start using increasing amounts of fuel per mile. It takes a lot more effort to run a fan very fast. The CPU will also draw more energy when its running hot. The same for all the other components.

If you like quiet, get big fans that pull plenty of air while running sloooowww.

By the way, stock coolers are not good value for money, but if you have a Dell who knows what else would actually fit!