Okay, so having fitted my computer with a quieter case fan and power supply, the loudest component is now my nvidia geforce 7900gs graphics card. Whilst not intolerable, I would like a solution to make it near, or absolute silent, and so in light of this a few questions:

1) How can I be sure the noise i'm hearing is the fan, and not a whine from the card?
2) How do I find out at what temperature low - if at all! - the fan switches off at? i.e. driver functionality
3) Do I dare use nvclock (nvclock -f -fanspeed x) to go below my current 20% fanspeed at a temp of 56C?
4) Would a cooling unit make any difference, especially if the driver won't shut down the fan anyway?
5) Is there a safe script I could try out?

Thanks in advance.

I am making the assumption that this is a tower computer and the case fan is a molex connector fan or a 3 pin fan and nothing to do with the cpu cooling fan here.
Have you tried running the computer if it is safe to do so with the case fan disconnected? If it is a molex there will be no automatic or manual control over it. If it is a 3 pin fan connector you may have the ability to control it with the motherboard.

My time experimenting has shown that the fans do not normally turn off but instead spin slower if they are controlled. There maybe a bios option that is able to show you and it is normally under something to the effect of "health monitoring" or "power management". Most modern boards will have selectable profiles for silent operation other than that I cant really recommend anything for this question.
While GPUs are fairly hardy to temperature I would recommend against adjusting the GPU fanspeed to play it safe. I have found that GPU fans are normally not too bad but considering its a x900 model it is likely to be beefy and get hot quickly. I'd personally consider turning down the fan alone to be risky.
I am not sure as to what you mean by cooling unit. It maybe possible to install a manual fan control unit in a spare cd/floppy bay which would allow you to slow the fan down or stop it, but it is worth checking if the CPU cooler is making the noise and not the case fan.
If your computer's hardware supports it then it should be possible to run sensors-detect. This will detect your motherboard and CPU thermal sensors if supported and is part of the sensors package. You will then be able to at any time query this information using the sensors command.
As part of the sensors package there is a script called pwm-config. If there are capable drivers present it will be possible to configure any motherboard controllable fans to reduce speed or stop based on temperatures. Despite using this script in the past and having no problems I cannot vouch for what would happen in the event of a kernel crash or such which may prevent the fans kicking back in when the computer started to get hot again so consider this if you use it.

Thanks for all your suggestions, netsurf. I should probably make it clear however that I was referring to the graphics card fan in my Qs, and have no worries elsewhere (case fan, CPU, PSU and so on, all being quiet)

By 'cooling unit' I meant something like this:

http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/vg...s1-rev.-2.html

I'm wondering that if I were to bring the temp down on my graphics card the nvidia driver will kick-in and switch the fan off at a certain low threshold (or
at least this my hope!) I am considering either getting a cooling unit like the above, or a fanless graphics card, but only short of a script solution (pwmconfig I have tried before, but is no good for this.)

Hello again NivanaII,

I am not sure that the fan can be turned off with nvidia cards at all as they tend to get hot very quickly from experience. If the drivers allow the power off of the graphics card fan then the quickest way I can imagine would be to take the side off the case with the machine on and then momentarily set the fan to 0% or as far as it will go. This should also be possible in nvidia-settings using coolbits "1" in the xorg config.

Other than this the only alternatives as you mentioned would be either a fanless graphics card or see if it is possible to replacing the cooling system on your current one with a quieter system

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1- Whining cards are pretty rare, I've only run across a few. Mostly its not something thats noticable unless you havea very quiet setup. Far more likely its your fan.

Best test for that is to stick something in the fan and se if that cuts the noise. Dont use a finger, sometimes GPUs fans are pretty fast.

2- Err...I foget. Mostly the fans never turn off anyway, no matter how cool the video card runs.

3- You can dare, if you want. I probably wouldnt.

4- Yes, it could....but its probably not worth it. Its about $35-40 US for the GPU cooler you linked to, and you could get a whole passive cooled video card which would be at least as fast as the 7900GS for not a huge amount more.

BTW, I'd be wary about running 'pure' passive cooling with a stock 7900GS. Having a fan pointing at the video card with passive cooling is much safer, and if you got a 120mm fan the noise should be a lot lower than with the standard 7900GS fan. The easy way to get a fan cooling the video card is with a Zalman FB123-

http://www.zalman.com/eng/product/Pr...ad.asp?idx=226

5- No idea.

There is one other idea- get the passive cooling, then mod the nVidia BIOS with nibitor to change the defualt GPU core and memory speeds, plus the voltage. Drop the core and memory speeds, and the voltage, the card should run a lot cooler. Warning- this will slow the card down. It wont matter at all for desktop use, but if you are a gamer it will impact on your framerates.

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Ah, well this is very useful to know, because if so it renders the purchase of a 'cooling unit' pointless - with this card at least.

Yep, just done that - it's the fan. Get this sorted and things should be pretty blissful.

Would this solution - to work - involve my taking off the stock fan/shutting it off, and hooking up something like shown in the link to a spare molex? If that's what you mean I should do then this seems a good solution to my problem.

I don't recall seeing any way to manually adjust the fan last time I opened up the case, but i'll take another look. As for enabling coolbits, this allows for overclocking in the nvidia-settings, but not fan control. Thanks again, netsurf

To allow for fan control from nvidia-settings you must add this to the Device section of xorg.conf:

I set mine to 50% and it works fine. I do this not to decrease the sound, but to keep it cooler. It seems the fan only turns on at higher temps.

You can also downclock the card and the temps will go down as well.

However, probably the best thing to do is clean the dust out.

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Yep, that brought it up, though I cannot 'apply' the scaler below 30%. Perhaps it's not possible without downclocking first...

I gave the fan a clean too (tiddly little thing!), but it's made no difference.

Not really...That 'cooling unit' you linked to is meant to be used passively, there isnt a fan on the unit at all. So it would be slient.

The only issue with changing to passive cooling it that if you dont have decent airflow in the case, or use a passive cooler that cannot take the heat of the video card you can cook the whole card.

Pretty much, but I dont think I would try it with the stock heatsink.

Most GPU heatsinks for use with fans have a flat area under the fan right over the top of the GPU. Thats the part that gets hottest, and with a stock hetsink setup its the areas that gets the most airflow. If you changed over to a FB123 + fan with the stock heatsink @ stock speeds, temps could rise. Its unlikely they would get high enough to cause instant damage, but it could shorten the lifespan of the card.

If you have a dead motherboard you migth be able to use the northbridge heatsink on the video card, depending on the disgn of the board and northbridge heatsink. If you could do that the FB123 + fan should work well, even at stock speeds.

My almost 3 year old system has a passive cooled graphics adapter fitted in a case with temperature controlled fans which spend some of their time stationary. The room temperature now is over 40 C. GKrellM shows the GPU at 80 C; it used to be around 90 (sensor drift?). Scary.

I know that's silly hot and it should mean a short life but it was like that for more than a year before I knew how hot it was so I figured it could stay like that and I'd buy another when it failed ...

FYI the model is Gigabyte "GeForce 7200 GS GV-NX72G512E2 Rev 2.3" which X reports as a "GeForce 7300 SE/7200 GS (G72)".

I meant that adding the arctic unit would have no effect on my graphic card's fan (switch it off), not acknowledging it as something *only* to be used with passive g.cards.

Yeah, this is what i've come to understand from reading around, though i've still little idea how to accurately gauge a good/bad airflow, hence playing things safe with the arctic cooler.

No, i've just this PC, so no spare boards (heatsinks) kicking around. I suppose I might have to think about getting a passive g.card and cooling unit, but that's not something I want to do particularly. If the arctic (or similar) knocks the temp down low enough, I could always look into just disabling the fan if the driver isn't going to do it for me, using just this to cool it down.

As an experiment I just tried incrementally decreasing the fanspeed with nvlock, and at around 13% the CPU fan overtakes in noise, the GPU temperature of course climbing in this minute or two of time from 56C to 70C. Where it plateaus I did not wish to find out, ramping the speed back up as I did. I know now at least that an arctic unit would be an excessive purchase for what would be good, but not earth shattering improvement, i.e. i'm in obsessive territory. Question now I suppose is do I want to keep a graphics card running at a temp of 70C for less noise...

I would go for this one, it is compatible with your card and if you attach a slow running 120mm fan to it you should have a really quiet and cool card.

So, did you underclock it ?