Additional Cooling Needed for Video Card w/Windows Vista
As mentioned, I've recently installed Windows Vista on one of my computers. There are some annoyances, notably some application compatibility issues (though mostly obscure video editing tools I use). One other annoyance I have is the demand of the Aero Interface on my video card. You can credit Aero for much of the pleasing aesthetics Vista has been praised for. However, this demand generates heat - which in turn, generates fan noise.
I'm currently running a modestly high-end nVidia-based 7950GT card from EVGA. I only purchased this a few months ago. It's a solid card, so I'm not really interested in upgrading at this point in time.
In Windows XP, whenever I would be doing something even somewhat graphics-intensive, the GPU fan on the card itself. I could hear it spin up, but while playing a game or watching video, the noise was negligible. Now, with the intense demands of Aero, the GPU fan will constantly spin - even when the computer is more or less idle. The fan will spin even when a lightweight screen saver is displayed, or the monitors have been powered off for power saving.
I began looking for alternatives to silence the noise. Fortunately, recent video cards are manufactured in such a way that you may be able to install an aftermarket cooling option. The heatsink (below) is typical secured with four screws, with an electrical connection for fan power.
After doing some research, I settled on the Zalman VF900-cu.
The instructions for the VF900-cu are easy to follow. You're given eight self-adhesive heatsinks for the ram chips present on the video card, as well as the primary GPU heatsink and fan. Zalman even provides some thermal contact material for the GPU to heatsink connection in the box. I opted to use someArctic Silver 5 that I had available.
The fan for the VF900-cu heatsink is a standard 3-pin connection that you may be able to power from your motherboard or an adaptor off of your ATX power supply. My video card used a rare 2-pin connection; it was easiest for me to split off of an ATX power supply line. The VF900-cu comes with a potentiometer to adjust fan speed. Normally, I don't like using these - but I have it installed for the time being until I can figure out if it needs to run at full speed or not.
Even running at full speed, the card is extremely quiet in comparison to the stock heatsink that the video card shipped with. The Vista nVidia drivers don't seem to have a way to meter GPU temperature (you can do this in Windows XP) - so I'm not able to give any specific measurement of improvement of cooling - though it does seem as the video card is running much cooler.
I had some initial concerns that the added weight of the new heatsink would cause problems, however - the video card is still resting comfortably in place.
The most obvious concern for anyone else installing a VF900-cu (or likely any other aftermarket cooler) would be the additional clearance required for a "taller" fan. The slot adjacent your PCI-E/AGP video card will likely become useless after you've installed this heatsink.
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