Verax G03 Graphics Card Fan on an ATI Radeon 9800 (OEM)
I knew when I bought an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (OEM) video card to use with Motion in my G5 PowerMac that I might need to replace its stock cooling fan because it was noisy. I ran it once, confirmed that was the case, and replaced the card with the silent Radeon 9600 that came with the machine. Of course, then I had to research what solutions to the problem might be out there.
The most obvious, expensive, and effective one was a fan from Verax called the G03. I looked at it, the ATI Radeon Cooler from Arctic Cooling, and some heat sinks that would have been totally silent had I chosen to use them. In the end, I chose the Verax fan because users had reported it was silent and its installation appeared fairly easy.
The new fan arrived a few days ago by Priority Mail. The fan and assembly looked like a black candy with curved shrouds inserted into a silver cup made of bent forks. The fan cage is tall, about one inch high. Mounted on the card, the fan cage definitely obliterates the PCI-X slot next to the AGP slot when inserted into the G5.
Mounting the fan on the card was painless. The fan in my OEM card was held in by plastic spread rivets. I removed the center posts with a pair of needle nose pliers that then allowed me to pull the rivets out. All I needed to do to remove the original fan was unplug its two wire power feed from the mounting bracket on the card and pop it off. Then, I cleaned old thermal paste off the GPU using some alcohol, applied thermal paste supplied with the fan, popped two new plastic spread rivets into the holes left by ATI’s, aligned the holes in the fan’s base with them, and popped the new fan into place. Power for the new fan comes from a small 3 pin plug that connects to wires from a pass-through Molex plug I connected in between the power chord and plug of my Pioneer DVR-109 in the optical bay. (I ran the small wires for fan power up through the hole from the PCI bay in the case. They’re long enough to run from the optical drive bay down to the fan. If you want more detail on actually mounting the fan, go to this article at Accelerate Your Mac.com.)
If I ever decide to use my PCI-X slots for anything, I’ll probably have to do some wire routing to get it all snuggled in. Also, the fan costs about $80, so it isn’t cheap. That said, it is extremely quiet. I can’t tell it’s there at all. And that makes it worth it.
The only regret I have at all is that I didn’t get a retail card instead of an OEM. The OEM card has half the memory of the full-blooded retail car; and if I’m going to go to this kind of trouble to make it quiet, I might have well have gone after the “top of the line”. Sometimes being penny wise really is pound foolish.
The most obvious, expensive, and effective one was a fan from Verax called the G03. I looked at it, the ATI Radeon Cooler from Arctic Cooling, and some heat sinks that would have been totally silent had I chosen to use them. In the end, I chose the Verax fan because users had reported it was silent and its installation appeared fairly easy.
The new fan arrived a few days ago by Priority Mail. The fan and assembly looked like a black candy with curved shrouds inserted into a silver cup made of bent forks. The fan cage is tall, about one inch high. Mounted on the card, the fan cage definitely obliterates the PCI-X slot next to the AGP slot when inserted into the G5.
Mounting the fan on the card was painless. The fan in my OEM card was held in by plastic spread rivets. I removed the center posts with a pair of needle nose pliers that then allowed me to pull the rivets out. All I needed to do to remove the original fan was unplug its two wire power feed from the mounting bracket on the card and pop it off. Then, I cleaned old thermal paste off the GPU using some alcohol, applied thermal paste supplied with the fan, popped two new plastic spread rivets into the holes left by ATI’s, aligned the holes in the fan’s base with them, and popped the new fan into place. Power for the new fan comes from a small 3 pin plug that connects to wires from a pass-through Molex plug I connected in between the power chord and plug of my Pioneer DVR-109 in the optical bay. (I ran the small wires for fan power up through the hole from the PCI bay in the case. They’re long enough to run from the optical drive bay down to the fan. If you want more detail on actually mounting the fan, go to this article at Accelerate Your Mac.com.)
If I ever decide to use my PCI-X slots for anything, I’ll probably have to do some wire routing to get it all snuggled in. Also, the fan costs about $80, so it isn’t cheap. That said, it is extremely quiet. I can’t tell it’s there at all. And that makes it worth it.
The only regret I have at all is that I didn’t get a retail card instead of an OEM. The OEM card has half the memory of the full-blooded retail car; and if I’m going to go to this kind of trouble to make it quiet, I might have well have gone after the “top of the line”. Sometimes being penny wise really is pound foolish.
posted by Andy Foster at
5:43 PM
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