Fan Noises drowns out gameplay enjoyment.

[PieceOfMind]

As well as dust contributing to the poorer flow of heat away from your graphics card (and hence the fan having to work harder to achieve the same result) the other main thing which can lead to noisy graphics card fans is just age. Most computer fans are of the ball-bearing type which can after a few years develop a really annoying (though not technically very loud) "rattle" sound characteristic. People would often have replaced their card before this becomes a big problem though.

 

[Wardancing]

Not sure on the exact 4870 you have, but i see lots of them simply have a fan that points downward (in a typical tower). This is just blowing hot air to the bottom of your case, and iirc hot air rises.

I would recommend you check your temperatures, and also i would recommend, if you have a free slot, pick up one of those PCI Fans. A cheap one should run you about $4, and a better name brand (better fan speeds) should run about $10-15.

If your GPU is blowing down, throw one of those under it, and it will blow the hot air out the back of the pc (the way a lot of other 'double' thick cards do. Make sure you get a pci fan that sucks from the top

 

[Cordycep]

I use headphones so I don't really hear the fans. My 8800GTS really does spin up when playing CiV though.

 

[tokala]

That's the card I'm using these days. Runs the game just fine, though it does require putting some thought into how air flows through the case.

Wow, call me surprised that the passive 4850 does not overheat in Civ5. One review I saw was subjecting this card to a bit more stress than just 3dmark and they got the chip and voltage regulators easily to above 100°C, even in a well ventilated case. What temperatures do you get?

 

[PieceOfMind]

Wow, call me surprised that the passive 4850 does not overheat in Civ5. One review I saw was subjecting this card to a bit more stress than just 3dmark and they got the chip and voltage regulators easily to above 100°C, even in a well ventilated case. What temperatures do you get?

I've seen it get up to over 90C on hot days (I say hot days because time of year is a big factor), but since then I've upped the nearby case fan speeds a bit and it hasn't been so bad. The hottest it has gotten to was 101C or so and at that point artifacts started showing and I closed the game asap. However that was before I upped the airflow.

Maybe I'm slowly destroying the card, but the impression I get is that getting to the 80s is not too bad. 90s is probably just barely ok but not good for the long life of the card. In any case, if slowly destroying the card is the price I pay for noise levels much closer to inaudible, I'm willing to pay it. The graphics card does produce a bit of a hum (its capacitors?) when it's under heavy load but it's still far better than listening to fans.

 

[tokala]

Maybe I'm slowly destroying the card, but the impression I get is that getting to the 80s is not too bad. 90s is probably just barely ok but not good for the long life of the card. In any case, if slowly destroying the card is the price I pay for noise levels much closer to inaudible, I'm willing to pay it.

Low 90s should still be okay, but as you pointed out it will shorten the lifetime of the card. By how much depends on the quality of capacitors and voltage regulators used on the board.
Had a passive Gigabyte once, worked fine for more than a year, than it slowly died. I had to lower the memory clock every few weeks to prevent artifacts.
Since then I settled for "silent" instead of "noiseless"

 

[PieceOfMind]

Since then I settled for "silent" instead of "noiseless"

Hmm, I'm not sure what you mean. That is to say I'm familiar with both the terms but not how that follows from everything else you said.

 

[tokala]

I probably misused the word "silent". Assumed it would mean "low-noise", but apparently it can describe "low" as well as "no" noise, with "no-noise" the far more common use.

 

[PieceOfMind]

So are you saying you don't bother with passively cooled cards anymore?

By the way, 'noise' in this context usually means something a bit different too, not being as synonymous with 'sound' as it is in everyday language. e.g. Music played back at high volume and at high quality is low noise, while the sound of a quiet fan is still described as noise because it's unwanted.

 

[dubrown]

No trouble for me with my 4870 card, I'm well below 80C all the time. Though I run dx9 mode as I still run XP on my machine. Then I suppose my two case fans do help quite a bit as well. But I do remember that when I first played the CiV demo I got some heat warnings. But after installing the full CiV and upgrading the graphiccard drivers no trouble at all. Though I haven't maxed out all settings either in the game, it's good enough for me on medium settings.

It's actually fairly quiet from the case so the fans that run on automatic seems satisfied with a fairly low speed. I've had other games that fires everything up so that you think you're in a jet engine or something...

 

[tokala]

So are you saying you don't bother with passively cooled cards anymore?

Exactly. I found the quest for a "as quiet as possible" computer to be either futile or very expensive if you want it to be still pretty capable for games. In one configuration my monitor ended up as the most audible component, and the high frequency sound it produced was way more annoying than even a much louder fan.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Exactly. I found the quest for a "as quiet as possible" computer to be either futile or very expensive if you want it to be still pretty capable for games. In one configuration my monitor ended up as the most audible component, and the high frequency sound it produced was way more annoying than even a much louder fan.

It was a CRT monitor, yes? If so, I agree the high pitch noise they make is pretty annoying. A muted CRT tv I can hear from across the house, but eventually my age will catch up to me and those sounds won't be audible anyway.

Re: quiet PCs
Personally I don't think it's expensive at all and the benefits to one's sanity are more than worth the effort involved. I tend not to get into the most cutting-edge games until they're around a year or two old (lol, I guess that makes them not cutting-edge anymore), so the compromise in performance is not so concerning.

But you are right it's about going for quiet rather than silence. There's always something that will still be audible - in your case it was the monitor. In my case it's the tick tack noises of the hard drive, which I can't be bothered trying to silence further, and I'm too cheapskate to buy a SSD yet.

Building a truly inaudible PC is too difficult - the key is cutting down on the noises that annoy the most.

 

[Polish]

I mostly play under closed headphones so it has not really been an issue for me, but I have noticed a lot of spin up while getting ready to play and when I have the phones off.

 

[gibson1314]

Thanks for all your replies and I have to give it a better clean out rather than a light one using the hoover. I'm moving my PC to a cooler room downstairs away from the bedrooms so that will help also. I checked my temperature and at full load it was hitting 90'c at 85% fan speed. I'd hate to hear 100%

 

[sketch162000]

Anyone else think this thread was about something completely different?

 

[Slowpoke]

check the first reply?

 

[Paradigne]

I bet this would be quiet...

http://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

 

[TheBlackHole]

Anyone else think this thread was about something completely different?

The play on words of the thread title just HAS to be intentional.

It. Just. Has. To. Be....

I honestly did think the thread would be about... well, what you probably thought it would be about, as well. Too perfect... and quite apt for some people, I'd venture to guess.