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Third party cooler for a 7950 graphics card?

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Krusty

Krusty

Insane Overclocking Clown
​
Joined
Sep 17, 2001
Location
Orange County
Greetings fellas,

I've just built a sweet new mini ITX Haswell gaming rig. While I'm not planning to OC at the moment, I do consider aggressive cooling to be important, primarily to keep noise levels down and to extend the life of my parts.

I picked up this XFX 7950 graphics card yesterday. I was a bit surprised to see that such a beefy card with a huge cooling shroud doesn't appear to have a whole lot of aluminum slapped on the thing to help keep it cool. What non-water cooled options do I have available to ensure this thing runs cool and quiet?

It's important to note that I can't go beyond the standard 2 PCIE slot width cooler as this is going in a mini ITX case. I may have a bit of room on the top end of the card, but I'm pretty limited to using a 2 slot cooler.
 
Do you even need one? I mean, these cards can handle their own heat, even overclocked just fine. I know with most cards with non reference cooling, you don't need to spin that fan up hardly at all to keep temperatures under control.

That said, the usual Arctic Cooling is my suggestion, though I don't think the Twin Turbo II is dual slot, its dual + just a bit IIRC...
 
EarthDog said:
Do you even need one? I mean, these cards can handle their own heat, even overclocked just fine. I know with most cards with non reference cooling, you don't need to spin that fan up hardly at all to keep temperatures under control.

That said, the usual Arctic Cooling is my suggestion, though I don't think the Twin Turbo II is dual slot, its dual + just a bit IIRC...
Click to expand...

Does the Twin Turbo II fit on a 7950? The Accelero Xtreme 7970 fits on my card but it definitely takes up quite a bit more than 2 slots.
http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/vga/502/accelero-xtreme-7970.html?c=2182

After making the purchase because I saw it on a good sale, I then went to look at reviews, only to find that many reviews indicate the thing regularly runs loud and runs at 90c and has a chance of failure. As I'm aiming for cool and quiet I'm thinking I won't be happy with the cooler on this thing.

Of course, I havent started gaming on the system quite yet so it may wind up being wonderful; I just don't expect that to be the likely outcome.
 
EarthDog said:
Do you even need one? I mean, these cards can handle their own heat, even overclocked just fine. I know with most cards with non reference cooling, you don't need to spin that fan up hardly at all to keep temperatures under control.

That said, the usual Arctic Cooling is my suggestion, though I don't think the Twin Turbo II is dual slot, its dual + just a bit IIRC...
Click to expand...

It's almost 3 sl
ots. But very efficient cooler.

I second ED: I don't think you need to spend $80 on an aftermarket cooler. The XFX one should do the job just fine.
 
Last edited:
yeah, I think 3 slots won't work for me. I have maybe 5mm of space between the cpu cooler and the side panel as is.
 
Sooo I picked up a Gelid Rev 2 Icy vision cooler. edit: Make that the Icy Vision-A cooler
IMG_9341_600_400.gif


In looking at the design specs, I knew I was going to have some difficulty fitting it into my case, but I figured I'd give it a go anyways. Here's what I found:

Upon taking apart my XFX 7950 and attempting to fit this cooler on, I discovered that the XFX cooler is, obviously, a non-reference design. because of this the VRM heatsinks didn't fit at all. I had to bust out my trusty dremel and pick up some Arctic Alumina to epoxy the heatsinks on. I wound up using the heatsink for the 6900 series video cards as well as the heatsink for the 7900 series video cards, both with the screw mounts cut off, to cool the VRMs. I had to use a couple of other assorted heatsinks as well. It's not pretty, but I think it'll make for much better cooling on the VRMs. Unfortunately I never did any tempreature measurements so I'll just need to trust that I'm awesome, and maybe check to ensure the thing isn't overheating now.

As for the GPU heatsink, I was correct in determining that it wouldn't fit in my case. Fortunately I built a nearly identical system for my wife, but using the Blue Bitfenix case. The primary difference, aside from color, is that the blue case doesn't have the same venting on the front and side, and that the side has a plexiglass panel.

My wife was playing Bioshock tonight in her new system, only to discover that the GTX 480 she inherited from me was overheating due to lack of airflow. At the same time, I discovered that my new heatsink would not allow me to place my side panel on my case.

The solution? SWAP SIDE PANELS! Now my wife has a blue case with a black ventilated side panel that prevents her video card from overheating and I have a black case with a blue side panel that has the plexiglass window removed to allow my heatsink to protrude out about 5mm.

I'll take some pics this weekend to show how it looks. I plan on putting something on the outside, but will be a bit lazy for a while.

As for performance, I did a quick and dirty test before and after. I started up Borderlands 2 and tossed myself in the same area with lots of buildings and enemies while on max graphical settings.

With the XFX heatsink:
idle temperature: 60c
idle fan speed: 31%, and slightly audible

load temperature after about 5 minutes: 80c
load fan speed after about 5 minutes: 67%, very audible. Even with over the ear headphones and mild volume I was clearly able to hear the fan


With the Gelid cooler:
idle temperature: 35c
idle fan speed 20%

load temperature after 5 minutes: 47c
load fan speed after about 5 minutes: 20%, and completely silent.

Even with the slightly Frankenstein computer case and horribly unscientific testing, I think it's safe to say that the replacement cooler is significantly better than the stock cooler. My load temperatures with the new cooler are actually lower than the idle temperatures with the stock cooler.
 
Last edited:
If I had money for an aftermarket cooler, I'd just get a bigger GPU

I remember the Arctic coolers on newegg used to be ~$100, total waste imo since it could be put onto the GPU price
 
Also I gave in to a sale and got the xfx card before properly researching the product. Turns out that the cooler sucks. After spending 3 bills an extra 50 bucks isn't too bad to get a hot and noisy card to run cool and quietly
 
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