Change cooling on GTX 970? (Currently Blower)

[tippytipper]

Hi, I have a Zotac GTX 970, the fan has become pretty noisy; I've tried oiling the spindle but it's not made a difference.

 

My tower is very quiet with the exception of the fan in the 970.

Ideally I could just replace it but I've had no luck finding a replacement.

 

So I was wondering if anyone knows if I can 'safely' remove the fan and use a third party cooling kit (bearing in mind these would be of a different type).

The existing fan has a 4 pin adapter, although I doubt the kits would run from that?

I've seen some PCI mounted coolers which would sit directly underneath… any advice is most welcome

[PopsicleHustler]

I would try changing the thermal paste first.

[GoldenLag]

2 minutes ago, tippytipper said:

So I was wondering if anyone knows if I can 'safely' remove the fan and use a third party cooling kit (bearing in mind these would be of a different type).

you can do that by just removing, the shroud and be carefull when you take of the heatsink and coldplate. 

 

you can order a Morpheus to relativly easily mount it and get a vastly better cooler. 

[Firewrath9]

yeah ofc, The Arctic Accelero Mono Plus should be a cheap and good upgrade.

[tippytipper]

Thanks to everyone I haven't had any experience with paste and removing heat sinks etc.

 

I'm not against the idea (it just makes me nervous); I was wondering, would just a set of fans sitting beneath the existing heat sink do a reasonable job?

[Jurrunio]

6 minutes ago, tippytipper said:

would just a set of fans sitting beneath the existing heat sink do a reasonable job?

Better than when the card's new, but still worse than maybe even short ITX cards. The heatsink on blower cards are even smaller than 2 slot axial fan cards of the same length, you'll see that when you take it apart.

[GoldenLag]

13 minutes ago, tippytipper said:

I'm not against the idea (it just makes me nervous); I was wondering, would just a set of fans sitting beneath the existing heat sink do a reasonable job?

removing the shroud and ziptying a 120mm fan will work wonders to the excisting heatsink. its likely to be better. 

 

the issue is cooling the VRM if they do not have a propper heatsink. 

[tippytipper]

Thanks again to all This is how it's looking without the shroud.

[GoldenLag]

3 minutes ago, tippytipper said:

Thanks again to all This is how it's looking without the shroud.

remember to have good airflow over the VRM heatsink and main heatsink. the memmory and VRM needs to get aiflow to have enough cooling. 

[tippytipper]

I have a couple of sickleflow 120mm coolermaster fans that I could use, the voltage (and adapter) is different so I guess I would power it from the motherboard and then just control their speed in the BIOS Although one fan would pretty much cover the whole card.

My case has two 200mm fans (top and front), the temps are pretty good. The CPU is watercooled.

 

If I just strapped a fan to that main heat sink I wonder if the fins would melt the plastic of the fan?

Otherwise some sort of PCI mounted supported may do the job?

[GoldenLag]

17 minutes ago, tippytipper said:

If I just strapped a fan to that main heat sink I wonder if the fins would melt the plastic of the fan?

unlikely. plastic melts at a very high temperature. your GPU would be dead if that occured. 

[tippytipper]

That's good to know, thanks

So it looks like I could just zip tie the 120mm fan to the card; I have a spare fan connector on the motherboard.

I just need to get myself a zip tie

 

This is how the fan would sit on the card, I would think one would be enough:

[tippytipper]

Just wondering…when I do strap the fan to it, would I want it to blow away or onto the card?

[shaz2sxy]

I would get an https://www.arctic.ac/uk_en/accelero-mono-plus.html and replace the whole cooling.

[tippytipper]

Fed up with the noise I decided to slap a 120mm fan on and see what happens.

 

I used GPU-Z to see what typical temperatures were, and also played a bit of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to see how hot it got.

 

- After checking the log the average idle temp' was 29c and max was around 80c.

 

- Since connecting the 120mm fan the average idle temperatures are around 26c.

 

The fan is connected to the motherboard at the moment, so I think that means the graphics card can't increase the fan speed?

So I'm wondering if anyone knows if there is a way I can get the graphics card to control the sys fan to increase when needed?

 

 

[IcarusLSC]

I put an Accelero Xtreme III on one of my GB 970s. Nice and quiet and cools well. Had to repin the fan plug, and minor slit in the shroud to move the fans over a little, and minor mod of the ram sinks (which I could have left off), but that was easy to do, and the gpu controls it on board. AC makes it super long too, so make sure there is room.

[Whiro]

7 hours ago, tippytipper said:

 

Fed up with the noise I decided to slap a 120mm fan on and see what happens.

 

I used GPU-Z to see what typical temperatures were, and also played a bit of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to see how hot it got.

 

- After checking the log the average idle temp' was 29c and max was around 80c.

 

- Since connecting the 120mm fan the average idle temperatures are around 26c.

 

The fan is connected to the motherboard at the moment, so I think that means the graphics card can't increase the fan speed?

So I'm wondering if anyone knows if there is a way I can get the graphics card to control the sys fan to increase when needed?

 

If you willing to spend a bit more money you can get Kraken G12 and cheap 120mm aio cooler, it’ll do quite good job

[tippytipper]

Quick update: I looked into software that could control the system fans based on the GPU temperature and apparently SpeedFan can do this, but unfortunately my motherboard is not supported.

 

I also found out that some motherboard manufacturers supply software or include BIOS settings that can also do this, but again unfortunately my motherboard is not supported.

 

So I decided to launch Shadow of the Tomb Raider and take a gamble. I played for a few minutes at a time and then observed the temp's, eventually building up to playing for over an hour. Temperatures were very similar to when using the blower fan, not exceeding 80c.
I may be imagining it, but there seems to be a slight improvement in performance.

 

If I wanted I could increase the minimum fan speed in my BIOS, but as it's much quieter at the moment I'll leave things as they are.

 

I looked into some of the cooling solutions posted (thank you everyone), but given the lowering cost of some better performing graphics cards I may eventually just upgrade the card.

 

In the short term, slapping the fan on has made my case much quieter, especially when under load, so I guess I'm satisfied for now.

 

Thanks again to everyone for their suggestions

[Whiro]

4 hours ago, tippytipper said:

Thanks again to everyone for their suggestions

I would still suggest changing thermal paste on this card, themps may drop down few c .

Just follow the tutorial and you will be good tbh

 

[ZzLy]

On 9/5/2019 at 12:34 PM, tippytipper said:

Hi, I have a Zotac GTX 970, the fan has become pretty noisy; I've tried oiling the spindle but it's not made a difference.

 

My tower is very quiet with the exception of the fan in the 970.

Ideally I could just replace it but I've had no luck finding a replacement.

 

So I was wondering if anyone knows if I can 'safely' remove the fan and use a third party cooling kit (bearing in mind these would be of a different type).

The existing fan has a 4 pin adapter, although I doubt the kits would run from that?

I've seen some PCI mounted coolers which would sit directly underneath… any advice is most welcome

This might be a bit of a workaround solution, but you could just sell the card and then buy another one used for the same price. All 970's generally go for the same price whether it's a blower card or something like an MSI card.