Newbie looking to silence my 8800GT

[ragnarok0]

Hi,

I'm looking to give water cooling a shot. My primary goal is as quiet as possible, but my actual budget is quite low. (about 120 or so)

For now, I only want to cool my GPU, and perhaps go to the CPU and the n/s bridges later. (I have a scythe Zipang cpu cooler which sounds reasonably quiet compared to everything else in my machine)

The issue is I have this gfx card:the caps are arranged differently than the reference design, and quite frankly, I don't know what on this thing needs to be cooled other than the ram and the GPU, or what kind of block to get:
http://www.xfxforce.com/media/product_configuration_large_icon/c8a0fc57171f5afa01179da325020095/8800%20GT%20PVT88PYHF4%202%20copy%20500%20max.jpg
For some reason, I don't see pics of coolers installed on cards with a row of caps like this one.

Things that I do have in my basement - various radiators, many of them are from "retired" a/c units, plenty of plastic tubing, 1/2 inch diameter as well as 3/8 inch diameter. I have some pumps - mainly windshield washer pumps, which I'm not sure if they were designed for continuous operation even if i could figure out how to make them quieter.

Thanks very much for any suggestions.

[meionm]

You can make your gt silent with air by using acrtic cooling accelro s1 with 120mm fan at 7v.

For watercooling block you could pick up mcw60. If you need a pump mcp350 or mcp655 at low setting shoud be quiet.

[bryan_d]

Why not try out some air cooling first?

http://www.svc.com/fan-acces1.html

But if you are really intent on watercooling you video card, be warned that you will have to be quieting down 2 components; the pump and the fan on the radiator will have to be quiet. (The GPU cooler linked above, can be used with a near silent fans up to 120MM's)

Why not post a picture of you case, so that we can better advise you on the components you need?

Will you be cooling the CPU down the road?

bryan d

EDIT: DANG! I got beat with the above posters, leet typing skills. :(

[ragnarok0]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll take a pic. Originally, I was not planning on water cooling this rig, its a very old Liang Li mini tower that is too small to fit everything inside.

I've thought about better air cooling, but my concern is the amount of heat this thing dumps inside the case - (is this something i should be worrying about? )

According to nView, idle temps are about 50c and stressed temps are about 80c.

Since I have non standard radiators, my back of napkin idea was to take a thrown out speaker enclosure, made of MDF, and place the pump, resevior and radiator in there. placing vents in appropriate places of course - and using that thing as a computer stand.

I guess the touchpoint here is that if this turns out successful, and I can't hear the water side of the cooling plant, i will proceed to w/c everything else (in time)... the big investment would be the initial build.

[Rickpatbrown]

External enclosures for WC components makes it very difficult to move your computer at all.

What kind of non-standard radiator are you talking about?

If it isn't designed to work with low flow fans, it will not be silent. From what I've read, you need thermochill or swiftech radiator paired with low air flow fans for silence. Thermochill is the best (most expensive also).

If you get the MCW60 (swiftech GPU block) you will need ram sinks and voltage regulator sinks. They sell them in a separate kit. This combo will fit almost any graphics card.