Pimp'd my graphics card
There’s something about shiny PC hardware I can’t resist. In my opinion, the shinier and harder to install it is, the better. Today saw the arrival of a Thermalright HR-03 Plus for my 8800GTS.I have dealt with Thermalright before. Their stuff is always big and extremely functional but considering the size of the stock 8800 coolers (about the same size as a dinosaur mobile phone brick) even I was surprised at how big this was.

That’s a 120mm fan I’ve stuck on there — mainly to keep the noise down. This introduced a problem: space. I have a mahoooosive HSU (Scythe Ninja) on my CPU, a pimped out, passive HSU on my chipset and trying to introduce this beast caused a bit of a squeeze:

How good is the HR-03 Plus? Awesome! Significant noise reduction. 10C cooler on idle (with the fan voltage at 50%). 30C cooler under load (100% fan voltage). Even with the fan at full-whack, it’s really hard to hear it over other PC noises.
This PC now has 4 120-140mm fans and 5 HDs. This causes a lot of vibration and that goes straight through the wheels into the desk the desk where it amplifies. I’ve found a solution for this though: packing materials. Thankfully the HR-03 came with a buttload of plasticy insulation so I cut some up and stuffed it under the wheel axles:

Again, significant noise reduction.
Now I need a passively cooled PSU =\
About Oli: I’m a Django and Python programmer, occasional designer, Ubuntu member, Ask Ubuntu moderator and technical blogger. I occasionally like to rant about subjects I should probably learn more about but I usually mean well.
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