My computer has it's GPU (Graphics processor) as part of the motherboard instead of a graphics card. You usually get better performance from graphics cards but for my needs the motherboard graphics are plenty good enough.
Except... any time I run a 3d game the temperature of the GPU goes sky high. The GPU on a graphics card would do the same but those have heat sinks and cooling fans to control that. My GPU only has a small heat sink.
I needed a way to cool it off.
I couldn't find anything! Search for GPU cooling and you find other people complaining in online forums but no solutions. But I knew something had to be out there.
I wrote emails to some PC cooling specialty stores.
CoolerGuys wrote back quickly with detailed recommendations! Turns out I was looking for the wrong thing. Instead of a GPU cooler, I needed a northbridge cooler (the GPU is part of the northbridge). And they had many ways to cool the northbridge.
One of their suggestions was this fan. What's impressive about the pick is that this fan wouldn't normally be considered as a northbridge cooler. But CoolerGuys figured out a clever way to use the fan's screws to latch onto the northbridge heat sink.
I decided to give their suggestion a try.
Before using the fan my GPU would typically run at 180f and would zoom towards 210f during graphically intense games (I never found out how high it might go as I would stop the game when the temperature got that high).
After installing the fan the GPU runs at 120f! And, during those games, the max temp levels out at 132f!
That's a fantastic result for a five dollar fan*.
And the fan is quiet. Since it's quieter than my CPU fan and my computer's case fan it I can't even hear it!
Summing it up. The fan is good but CoolerGuys are GREAT!
*I did have to pick up a power adaptor to plug the fan into a molex plug on my computer's power supply. Those are cheap.
Get more detail about Scythe "MINI KAZE ULTRA" 40 x 20 mm Silent Mini Fan.
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