Originally posted by Estuansis:

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Russ,
The AMD fan you pointed me at works great. I too felt the chipset and it was too hot to keep my finger there more than a few seconds. Now the heatsink is slightly warm at best. 10 runs of IBT high stress shows about a 5*C drop at the thermistor, but I think it may be more because the temp difference on the heatsink was drastic.

Anyway just letting you know everything worked exactly as you described(I even used a zip tie like you suggested) and my cooling setup thanks you :D

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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Yeah I scalded myself on my old P5N-E the one time I touched it. Thankfully no other board I own has run hot enough to cause sufficient damage :P
Generally, in the case of properly manufactured chipsets (i.e. anything but nvidia) you're fine with pretty considerable temps, you only need to look into the temperatures if you're getting stability issues which aren't getting cured (or are being made worse) with voltage.

Russ: Mounts have an enormous amount to do with noise. I don't know if anyone remembers the hideous racket that Radeon X850/X1800/X1900 coolers made, but after I took the fan off, it was remarkably quiet running in open air. A little vibration dampening goes a long way.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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Fan vibration's quite a precise thing, you often can't tell in your hand, but you soon will when it's screwed in somewhere. The only whining noise you'll ever get from air resistance is backpressure causing the fan to be resisted.

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Originally posted by Estuansis:

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Yes the small AMD fan is actually pretty quiet. So much so that it was nearly inconsequential to my overall noise level. No vibration or bearing noise to speak of really. And yeah they do move a ton of air for the size.

Russ, for the record my MSI 8800GTS G92 still works like a charm. Relatively quiet with good temps and still reasonable performance. By chance is the 9500GT you got a 3rd party PCB design or is it a reference card? A lot of companies are fine until you use a 3rd party design.

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Originally posted by Estuansis:

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I would say go for a slightly more enthusiast geared video card considering how often you use your PC. A GTS250 can be found for as low as $110 and are still everywhere in abundance. It would be more powerful, better cooled, better designed, and better suited to your needs. To Nvidia's credit the GTX200 series was actually very good while the GeForce 9s were known to have somewhat of a failure rate and a few lingering issues left from GeForce 8. Not saying that's what you should do but it's what I would do. You certainly have the system to push a decent video card. And it wouldn't be overkill in the slightest. Look what I'm doing with the same CPU :P

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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Actually almost all MSI 9500GT cards are non-reference, yours included, so it's probably just MSI to blame.
The GTS450 is a considerably better option than the GTS250, it's 106W instead of 140W, it's about 25% faster, and it's DX11. The HD5770 is all-round a better offering, but if you're stuck with nvidia, the GTS450 is the one card from the 400 series card that's not a terrible purchase.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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The rules apply to everyone except Will it seems... Grow up tbh.

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