6800 Quickie

[Scorpiоn]

The BFG 128MB 6800 OC, to be specific.

After I got my laptop a few days ago, I was blown away by how quiet it was.  It makes prcatically no noise at all!  When I start up my PC, however, it's like a wind tunnel test is starting.  I've grown accustomed to it, but now it's sticking in my side again.  Of all the fans I can think of:

• Front case fan
• CPU fan
• AGP fan

Only the the AGP really sticks out at being loud.  Have y'all had problems with loud fans?  Is there any way to make 'em quieter?  I also remember, when I was first installing it, it made a hooendous screech if it was underpowered.  I guess it loves being loud.

Now it hits me why my mom has trouble sleeping, you can hear the dang thing right through the wall!

[congo]

Yikes, that's not very nice is it.

I'm sure there are fan mods available, beware of warranty issues, if you mod the fan, make sure you can revert back unnoticed to the manufacturer if you value your warranty.

Also monitor temps accurately before and after the mod, if you do one, you don't want high temps, or you just may need that warranty.

Basically, any fan can be used as long as it passes a sufficient volume of air over the GPU's heatsink.

I'm going to assume your present fan is a very high RPM model, and that's what is responsible for the racket. This is a twofold curse, being both noisy and also prone to early failure.

A lower RPM fan should be sought, in most cases this will mean a larger diameter fan with larger blades to get the same volume of airflow. This may require a custom shroud and mounting system to be invented by you, or perhaps you can find a proprietry replacement.

The original fan should be removed if possible to allow unrestricted airflow over the heatsink, but alas, many video card fan/hsf units are integral. Again, maybe a storebought replacement can be found, possibly even silent water cooling.

I'm a DIY kinda guy, and I approach such problems with a plastic ice cream container, scissors and a hot glue gun