Nv Silencer 5 Review

[Mutombo]

After becoming fed up with the noise and lousy cooling of the stock cooler that came with my XFX 6800gt, I decided to purchase an Arctic Cooling vga silencer 5. My system is as follows:

 

A64 3200+

ASUS K8n-e Deluxe

Antec Sonata

XFX 6800gt

 

Installation was pretty easy, and I've never installed anything like this before. I simply removed the screws from both the fan and the back side of the card and the stock fan and heatsink came right off. After scraping off the leftover thermal gunk from the core and the memory, I applied arctic silver 5 to the core and the thermal paste from the silencer package to the memory.

 

Make sure to plug the fan connecter to the card before mounting the silencer to the card. I was very concerned about breaking the screws by overtightening (after reading several reviews online) so at first I was very careful and didn't tighten the screws enough. Big Mistake!! After booting up and checking the temps I see that the core temp is at 103!!! I quickly powered down and tightened the screws several more turns. The instructions are very vague, as they just say to tighten until the rubber washer "compresses slightly."

 

With the stock cooler I was getting an idle core temp of 59 and ambient temp of 43. Under full load, the core temp went up to 83 and ambient up to 56! Now, with the silencer properly installed, my idle temps are 51 on the core and 38 ambient. Under full load, these temps rise to 69 and 46.

 

Needless to say I am very happy with the results, as the silencer has reduced my core temps, ambient temps, and noise level by quite a bit. I haven't tried oc'ing yet, I'm gonna give the as5 a few days before trying to push it.

 

These temps are probably still a little higher than where they should be, but I think an intake fan for my Sonata (which also blows air right over the video card) will help with that.

 

Overall I think this is a great replacement for the shoddy stock cooling on some of the gt's.