NV Silenver 5 - *semi* impressed

So I received my NV Silencer 5 on Monday and decided to put it on the card without any thermal paste to see how far the GPU core really way from the cooler, since I've heard some horror stories about it not touching the core. Turns out it's true, my cooler was at least 2mm away from the cooler. Now a thick layer of thermal paste could fix that, but you'd get horrible temps. So I went to lap it!

It took two four-hour nights to get "good" results. Yes, the GPU now touches the cooler just like it should, but it turned out I lapped the RAM sinks just a TAD too much. No harm done there though, since I don't over clock THAT much, and GDDR3 runs relatively cool even under load.

So, I put some of their Thermal Silicone Paste on the RAM chips, since I had plenty left over from my NV Silencer 2 and the tube that came with the 5. At least the RAM sinks are almost touching the cooler! Put some Arctic Ceramique on the GPU core and put all it all back together.

I power the system on, now with the NV Silencer on my 6800GT, and log into windows to check video temps. Says 49......and slowly rising. It eventually tops off at 53-54°C idle, not to bad. Idle temps with the reference cooler were 52°C after removing thermal pads and applying AS3. Keep in mind that I'm one who likes a silent computer.

I stress test the video cards with some Farbrausch demos. fr-08, the one in 64kb, and the fr-19 demo. The farbrausch demos have always heated my video card up and hit the highest load temps by the end of the demo. My previous load temp with the stock cooler was 79°C!!!!! Now it's down to a mere 68°C, that's an 11-digit difference! With the sacrifice of idle temps rising to 54 instead of 52, I now have much lower load temps, which I am very pleased with.


The only thing that disappointed me was that the NV Silencer 5 wasn't ready to be installed right out of the packaging. I'm disappointed in Artic's video coolers and this is going to be the last one I buy of their, next time it's a Zalman. I'm somewhat angry with myself for lapping the RAM sinks a bit too much, since I'm a perfectionist, but I'll live. It doesn't seem as if the back of the chips is getting to hot, nor is the cooler surface that the chips are under, so I think I'm safe.

Has anyone else had THIS big of a problem with the NV Silencer 5? Larry Quinn destroyed his out of frustration from buying a crappy product, and I don't blame him, I almost did the same.

~C.P.

do you have any pics?

EDIT: No, no experience with NV5, but similar experience with one of the other new silencers:

Just a few weeks ago I replaced my AC VGA silencer with an ATI silencer 1 on my R9800Pro.

I then noticed that there are a few components that keeps the copper from reaching the core. I had to take out my cheap dremel-wannabe and cut of a piece of plastic.
Photos HERE

[OT]
The reason to the switch was that the baring were getting old and dry. I always loved my VGA S because it was so silent and I could easily boost the fanspeed when I was going to game. Since the new silencers are quite similar to the old but with copper base I thought it would be as silent but with better performance. Sadly the silent part isn't true. I think I will have to make a some kind of voltage regulator to quiet it down. I also got an NV silencer 1 for my 4200 and the same mod applies to that one.

NVSilencer: $30.00
Arctic Silver: $7.00
Time to Fix/Install: 8 Hours
Ending up with just a "good" cooler: Priceless

*Shakes Head*

consumer9000. I love to mod and work with my hands. I'd take an expensive cooler to mod over a read to apply one any day, simply because I like to know that I myself did something to the cooler to make it work properlly, or better than it was right out of the box. Thus, 8 hours of time into this cooler was worth it for me.

Celeron_Phreak said:

consumer9000. I love to mod and work with my hands. I'd take an expensive cooler to mod over a read to apply one any day, simply because I like to know that I myself did something to the cooler to make it work properlly, or better than it was right out of the box. Thus, 8 hours of time into this cooler was worth it for me.

Click to expand...

Well said, I love modding things to make them perform better. Also, its great looking at 44C idle temps instead of 50s with stock cooler. BTW, I did the same thing. My 6800 was idling at 55C with stock cooler and loaded in the high 60s, I got my NV5 Silencer .. and I was getting the SAME temps cause of poor contact, I used it as a nail file. After getting some 250, 400, and 600 grit sand paper, I lapped it for an hour and walla (Not a lot of time, but one hell of a temp difference) Im idling @ 44C and loading @ 55.

Hell, and to think I was gonna buy one of those for my 9800. Damn the thing looked so good too.

i put mine on before i heard about any contact problems, AS5, and my load temps (rthdribl)went from 79 to 67, idle went from 50 to 52, ambient from 40 to 36

thats clocked as in my sig, maybe mine makes perfect contact out of the box...

Yea you just gotta play with it to make it have proper contact. What I did was I kept track of how i tightened each screw by the number of rotations it made. That way I insured that each bolt was tightened the same. Load temps dropped alot and so did my idle