Build the ultimate quiet PC
The graphics card is a major contributor of PC noise--arguably more so than the CPU. This is because they usually ship with tiny fans that whir incessantly. We've swapped our standard ATI Radeon X1800 XL card for a completely fanless MSI ATI Fanless X1600XT 256MB DDR3 card (on its own in picture 1, and installed in the motherboard in picture 2). The standard ATI cooling fan has been replaced with a fanless heatsink, so it's completely silent. Heat is dissipated over a set of heatpipes instead of by a fan. Despite it being fanless, this card is a solid midrange component that can cope with most of today's modern 3D games, such as Half-Life 2 and Doom 3. If you don't have the funds to splash out on a new fanless card, you can modify your existing card with a quieter cooler. As you can see from picture 3 onward, we've removed the standard ATI cooling fan with a Zalman VF900-Cu dual-heatpipe VGA cooler. The process can be quite tricky, but if you've got a tiny screwdriver and a modicum of courage it'll be well worth it. In picture 3, we've unscrewed the rear bracket of the standard cooler, then removed the combined cooler and heatsink from the front of the card in pictures 4 and 5. In picture 6 we've attached tiny heatsinks (included in the Zalman package) to the card's memory chips. The final step simply involves re-attaching the quieter, larger Zalman CF900 fan, as can be seen in picture 7. | ||||
)
- Talkback
-
There are currently no comments for this story.
To post comments, you need to become a member. It's FREE.
