AMD FirePro W600 - Heatsink/Fan Replacement for Silence

[Yukikaze]

I have a W600 card that I picked up cheap a long time ago since it was lacking the rear bracket and its a great card for driving a lot of monitors. It was gathering dust for a while, but recently I used it to fashion myself a TB3 graphics dock for my work Lenovo X390, since I had a spare TB3 to PCIe board and the work issued USB-C dock can't walk and chew gum at the same time (DisplayLink absolutely sucks when there's a lot of video going on on multiple screens).

It works absolutely great, but there's one problem: The damn fan on the W600 is annoyingly loud. It would be loud if it were in a case, but since it sitting naked on my desk, it is driving me crazy. I repasted the card just in case, but that doesn't help with the fan noise since the fan isn't really well controlled on this card, so it keeps whining away even if the card is idling at 32C. I tried software fan control via Afterburner, but the minimum setting of 25% is still loud, and the card tops out at 51C with the fan on minimum even when under 100% load, so this is still overkill.

I tried looking around, since many (many, many, many) years ago things like the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 existed to silence video cards, but it looks like all of these products are now extinct.

How can I make this thing shut the hell up? Ideally, I'd love to give it a passive cooler: It sits naked, so it has plenty of cool air around around it, and it isn't exactly a powerhouse of a card (it is in the ballpark of a HD7750 or GTX650), nor does it spend much time under load, but I can't find anything at all.

Any ideas are welcome!

 

[Keullo-e]

Just the traditional way of using a generic fan ziptied to the heatsink and running it with low RPM?

 

[Yukikaze]

That could work, thanks. Not using any fan at all would be my preferred solution, however. If I can't find any silent solution at all, then using a 92mm fan tied above the HS with the original fan disconnected will likely be my go-to solution.

 

[JayCan73]

you could see if any retail forms of the card are for sale as broken on ebay etc, for parts and try to adapt the cooler.

 

[damric]

I modded some FirePro cards recently with these cheap $10 sinks. It took about 2 weeks to get here from China, but they work pretty well. I did have to slightly trim some of the aluminum base to make the low profile cards slot properly using diagonal pliers. The 2 pin fan connection and screw holes line up perfectly and there were no component clearance issues. It's silent even at 100%, but you can run it whatever speed you program.

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[eidairaman1]

I have a W600 card that I picked up cheap a long time ago since it was lacking the rear bracket and its a great card for driving a lot of monitors. It was gathering dust for a while, but recently I used it to fashion myself a TB3 graphics dock for my work Lenovo X390, since I had a spare TB3 to PCIe board and the work issued USB-C dock can't walk and chew gum at the same time (DisplayLink absolutely sucks when there's a lot of video going on on multiple screens).
View attachment 236268
It works absolutely great, but there's one problem: The damn fan on the W600 is annoyingly loud. It would be loud if it were in a case, but since it sitting naked on my desk, it is driving me crazy. I repasted the card just in case, but that doesn't help with the fan noise since the fan isn't really well controlled on this card, so it keeps whining away even if the card is idling at 32C. I tried software fan control via Afterburner, but the minimum setting of 25% is still loud, and the card tops out at 51C with the fan on minimum even when under 100% load, so this is still overkill.

I tried looking around, since many (many, many, many) years ago things like the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 existed to silence video cards, but it looks like all of these products are now extinct.

How can I make this thing shut the hell up? Ideally, I'd love to give it a passive cooler: It sits naked, so it has plenty of cool air around around it, and it isn't exactly a powerhouse of a card (it is in the ballpark of a HD7750 or GTX650), nor does it spend much time under load, but I can't find anything at all.

Any ideas are welcome!

It's a HD7750, R7 250E , R7 350 pretty much.

Tried Thermalright, Zalman, Arctic cooling, Gelid?

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AMD Archives - Gelid Solutions

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Raijintek Morpheus, Morpheus 2?

 

[Yukikaze]

I modded some FirePro cards recently with these cheap $10 sinks. It took about 2 weeks to get here from China, but they work pretty well. I did have to slightly trim some of the aluminum base to make the low profile cards slot properly using diagonal pliers. The 2 pin fan connection and screw holes line up perfectly and there were no component clearance issues. It's silent even at 100%, but you can run it whatever speed you program.

VGA PC Computer Video Card Cooler Cooling Fan Heatsinks For NVIDIA ATI Geforce | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for VGA PC Computer Video Card Cooler Cooling Fan Heatsinks For NVIDIA ATI Geforce at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

I saw that on ebay, and was skeptical, so thank you for your input, it really helps!

It's a HD7750, R7 250E , R7 350 pretty much.

Tried Thermalright, Zalman, Arctic cooling, Gelid?

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AMD Archives - Gelid Solutions

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Raijintek Morpheus, Morpheus 2?

Thank you!

I tried AC - Can't find any of their old products. I would've loved the L2, it seems perfect for this, but I can't find a single seller for it. Gelid comes up empty, Zalman comes up with some really old products that don't look like they'd fit, and the Raijintek ones cost more than the card itself AND are absolutely huge.

I looks like so far the options are:
1) Suck it up, buttercup.
2) That 10$ cooler that damric linked.
3) Ziptie a fan on top.

 

[claes]

Any old cpu heatsink might work

 

[Assimilator]

DisplayLink absolutely sucks when there's a lot of video going on on multiple screens

Only true if the CPU and GPU you're using it with are weak POS. And I very much doubt that a decade-old midrange dGPU like the W600 is going to be stronger than even the weakest iGPU from the past couple of years.

 

[Yukikaze]

The CPU is an i7-8665U, so the iGPU is indeed weaker than the W600 anyway, and that's kinda off-topic to the question of silencing a video card, but because of how DisplayLink works (and how much CPU utilization is higher when it is used rather than the native iGPU output), the on-screen performance is horrible with a DisplayLink dock with multiple displays. Visible lagging when moving/resizing windows, especially bad when video streams are going (such as a conference calls with 4-5 people with video on), or when large Excel spreadsheets are open. The fact the main display is a 2560x1600 is not helping matters, either, I suspect.

None of this happens with the W600 (or even a much weaker HD7570, but that one doesn't have 3+ video outputs), so that problem is solved (if I had a spare TB3 dock which would route the iGPU outputs natively, that would likely solve the problem just the same, since the issue isn't with the power of the GPU, but with the whole way DisplayLink works which means a lot of handling of video streams and image output in CPU SW instead of GPU HW).

 

[eidairaman1]

I saw that on ebay, and was skeptical, so thank you for your input, it really helps!


Thank you!

I tried AC - Can't find any of their old products. I would've loved the L2, it seems perfect for this, but I can't find a single seller for it. Gelid comes up empty, Zalman comes up with some really old products that don't look like they'd fit, and the Raijintek ones cost more than the card itself AND are absolutely huge.

I looks like so far the options are:
1) Suck it up, buttercup.
2) That 10$ cooler that damric linked.
3) Ziptie a fan on top.

Go on amazon, ebay,

 

[Yukikaze]

Go on amazon, ebay

I did, of course. None of the old AC GPU coolers can be found on either, or at least none that would ship here.

 

[damric]

Yeah I had the same problem looking for better heat sinks for W2100 and W4100 that I overclocked like crazy +100%. There just aren't any aftermarket heatsinks available anymore. It's like the companies all discontinued them, and they are nowhere to be found on ebay or amazon. Most of the stuff on ebay is just junk no better than the stock cooler, but I took a chance on that one $10 cooler and it works fine despite just being aluminum, and a very old design. The little stock heat sink is really just terrible, and I really mean spectacularly bad. I also tried mounting various stock intel and AMD sinks but they all had component clearance issues. I did manage to finally score an Arctic Accelero TT2 off of this forum but it also did not clear the components. I actually had to mount a universal water block I had, while I was waiting for the cheap cooler to arrive.

While shopping for other FirePros I stumbled across a seller who has a whole bunch of WX 4100s (similar to RX 460) with aftermarket heat sinks. I can't seem to figure out what exactly that sink is, but it looks awesome with the heat pipes, and it's even passive. It must be available somewhere, because the guy was selling a whole lot of them. LINK

Here's some pics of the W4100 PCB which is similar to the W2100, and I'm guessing it has the same capacitors and stuff that block most coolers. Also you can see the the YOTA cooler fits, but you'll have to cut a little bit off to get it to slot properly. In the picture below I drew a line with a marker where you trim it with diagonal cutters.

 

[eidairaman1]

Yeah I had the same problem looking for better heat sinks for W2100 and W4100 that I overclocked like crazy +100%. There just aren't any aftermarket heatsinks available anymore. It's like the companies all discontinued them, and they are nowhere to be found on ebay or amazon. Most of the stuff on ebay is just junk no better than the stock cooler, but I took a chance on that one $10 cooler and it works fine despite just being aluminum, and a very old design. The little stock heat sink is really just terrible, and I really mean spectacularly bad. I also tried mounting various stock intel and AMD sinks but they all had component clearance issues. I did manage to finally score an Arctic Accelero TT2 off of this forum but it also did not clear the components. I actually had to mount a universal water block I had, while I was waiting for the cheap cooler to arrive.

While shopping for other FirePros I stumbled across a seller who has a whole bunch of WX 4100s (similar to RX 460) with aftermarket heat sinks. I can't seem to figure out what exactly that sink is, but it looks awesome with the heat pipes, and it's even passive. It must be available somewhere, because the guy was selling a whole lot of them. LINK

Here's some pics of the W4100 PCB which is similar to the W2100, and I'm guessing it has the same capacitors and stuff that block most coolers. Also you can see the the YOTA cooler fits, but you'll have to cut a little bit off to get it to slot properly. In the picture below I drew a line with a marker where you trim it with diagonal cutters.

They look like Zalman or MSI design

 

[Yukikaze]

Just to close the loop here. I finally got the cooler damric recommended (this one) delivered from China and installed it. No clearance issues with any of the PCB components.

At 25% you can't hear it, while the card maxes out at 51c with a 24c ambient at full load. Needless to say I am mega happy.

Those coolers look great for low-end cards. I might need to get a couple more for my GPU zoo.

 

[eidairaman1]

Just to close the loop here. I finally got the cooler damric recommended (this one) delivered from China and installed it. No clearance issues with any of the PCB components.

At 25% you can't hear it, while the card maxes out at 51c with a 24c ambient at full load. Needless to say I am mega happy.

Those coolers look great for low-end cards. I might need to get a couple more for my GPU zoo.

View attachment 248754

Zalman/MSI knockoff

 

[claes]

Stop posting

 

[eidairaman1]

Unwatch it then

 

[AleXXX666]

Just the traditional way of using a generic fan ziptied to the heatsink and running it with low RPM?

yeah, get bequiet or other 140 mm fan and you should get it

recently I've had Gigabyte RX5500XT dual fan where fans were cracking. stupid aliex*** seller haven't shipped me ordered fans so I removed the shroud and ziptied one of my bequiet 140mm. it's dead silent even at max rpm and it did the trick

well, OP:
today is trend to use custom water coolers on gpus too.
maybe one of them will fit?