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Does anyone have any experience swapping coolers for a GTX 970? I have cheapo PNY 970 XLR8 with a blower cooler, and as has been discussed many times before, (in fact I made a thread about it a while ago) these blowers aren't as good as the old ones. They have a really grating sound to them at any speed.

I'm just wondering if anyone has had success in swapping coolers from different 970s or even other cards. People sell the coolers cheap on ebay all the time, and I'd honestly do it if I could get rid of this noise. I know there isn't really a "reference" design to go by, but this PNY card looks pretty similar to others. I can't see them doing anything too unusual for their cheapest model.

Is the blower fan separate from the cooler shroud? I have to imagine it is. If that's the case, you don't need a whole new cooler, just a new/better blower fan.

DPete27 wrote:

Is the blower fan separate from the cooler shroud? I have to imagine it is. If that's the case, you don't need a whole new cooler, just a new/better blower fan.

I was actually just thinking the same thing. I saw a picture of one dismantled partially, and I can't tell if its something that can easily be removed\replaced. I'd love to just swap out the fan.

Any suggestions as to where I could look for a good variety of blower fans? My usual places (ebay, Amazon) brought up very few results and all looked like the same item from China. I don't mind if its Chinese, as long as it is less grating to listen to and still cools properly.

Obviously you don't want the same Make/Model fan as you already have. I'd start with searching for fan Make/Model from other blower style GPU coolers and compare fan diameter (which should be pretty standard) mounting screw locations to the fan on your GPU.

DPete27 wrote:

Obviously you don't want the same Make/Model fan as you already have. I'd start with searching for fan Make/Model from other blower style GPU coolers and compare fan diameter (which should be pretty standard) mounting screw locations to the fan on your GPU.

The cooler on my old evga GTX 660 was pretty quiet and didn't have that rattling\humming sound that my PNY does. I know that a lot of nvidia blower coolers after that were apparently junk (which is sad as they'd always been extremely reliable and as quiet as one would expect from such a design). Any idea which recent cards had decent blower coolers? I think I've read that most of the Titan reference coolers are good, but I'm not sure if those fans would be compatible (or available to purchase).

I've heard bad things about the 7xx series blowers and also some 6xx blowers, so its hard to tell where to go. If I still had my GTX 660 I'd certainly take that apart to get the model number off of that fan. I think they're similarly sized. Its in a relative's computer now though, and I doubt they'd appreciate me tearing it apart.

Well, I dismantled my 970 and the fan appears to be permanently attached to the plastic backing plate (the portion that extends beyond the PCB). The specs for the fan are actually listed on the front (inside) of the plate itself, indicating that it must be manufactured that way. It seems to use the standard slim 4 pin black fan connector you see on fans all over ebay, but it would require either a fan that is attached to a similar backing plate or a backing plate that is meant to have a removable fan. Unless I can find such a thing, I'm left with fabricating a new backing plate or destroying this one and hoping there's a way to attach a better fan. Its too bad PNY won't just send replacement parts. I'd buy a new one and (assuming the new one is no better) then tear this one apart to see if I could modify it to fit a better fan.

The fan itself is roughly 65mm by 25mm.

Its too bad they don't make these just for use without water cooling:

https://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Hydro-HG ... B0151PYG4E

I would hope that fan is better, but there's nothing to actually keep the air flow going over the GPU and VRM heatsinks.


EDIT: I wonder if an old Arctic Accelero S1 would work for a GTX 970 in a well ventilated case.I have tons of nice 120MM fans to add if necessary. I greatly prefer things like this that I can maintain myself (replacing a common 120mm fan if one goes bad). I wonder if one would fit in my coolermaster 690 II.

Well, I had already typed this reply but accidentally closed the window... DOH.

Anyway, long story short, I took off the fan and shroud (3 screws and a fan plug), strapped an 80mm Antec Tricool to the card with zip ties (in such a way that it blows on the VRM and GPU heatsinks), set it to high and it is way way less offensive to listen to. My case has so many 120mm fans running at a moderate level already that it isn't that much louder. Antec Tricools are great fans though... of all the ones I have it was the quietest with lots of airflow. The fact that its adjustable is awesome. I might be able to get by having it set to medium this time of year and maybe high in the summer.

The kicker is that its also significantly cooler! Playing Disco Dodgeball at 400fps with the stock cooler made it hit 72C after a few minutes. Playing it at 1000fps (by turning off bots and just facing a corner) only managed to push this thing to 66C with the 80mm fan on it! By setting a 240fps cap (pegged) it dropped the temps to 42C! Furmark topped out at 69C after 5 minutes and stayed there for 10 minutes. I didn't run that with my stock cooler but I can imagine it was much higher before, and the sound would have been like an electric shaver.

Basically, problem solved! I don't care what it looks like really. If it ends up being a bit too hot during the summer months or if I want it to be a bit quieter, I might get a large passive cooler that I can attach a 120mm fan to.

This was really easy. In fact, I can see myself doing this on other cards in the future. I like that if the fan goes bad I can simply replace it with any old fan I have laying around.

EDIT: Just realized that if I add another 120mm fan set to low speed on the side panel blowing directly onto my 970 I can turn the 970's 80mm fan down to medium, which makes it nearly inaudible over the rest of the fans. I adjusted a few other things in my case and now my computer is even quieter at idle than it was before... and it gets no louder under load, aside from the PSU fan ramping up slightly.

After an hour and a half of gaming at 240fps the GPU was running at a cool 52C with the fan set to medium and it is super quiet now. Mission accomplished!

So, after playing some slightly more intensive games, the temps do go up a bit more. Still not "hot" by any means, but once summer hits and I'm dealing with 80F+ ambient temps, I'm sure it will be much harder to cool this card with an old 80mm fan and the small (though decently built with heatpipes...) stock heatsink.

Since I prefer cooling methods that are easy and cheap to maintain and are a long-term investment, I opted for an Arctic Accelero S3 I found super cheap for $32 shipped brand new. Not bad at all! I'll likely just attach the Antec 120MM 2 speed fan I have to the S3 and it should cool extremely well. My CM690 II has pretty decent airflow with a bottom mounted fan that will be blowing toward the GPU, and a 140mm front intake, with 2 120mm exhaust fans at the top and rear of the case. What I like about this option is that it will most likely work with future cards as well and if a fan ever wears out its as simple as strapping on a different 120mm fan from my drawer full of new fans. This is what I've done with my Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme and it has lasted me almost 10 years and several heavily overclocked builds. I think I've gone through 3 fans.

I'm sure there are stock GPU cooling solutions that keep temps lower under load, but with this setup I should never have to worry about what I end up with when I get my next GPU. The last fancy stock cooler I used was on my MSI GTX 560 Ti TwinFrozr II and those fans started failing within 2 years. Horrible grinding noise when cold with the threat of one failing and causing overheating eventually. I'd hope that improvements have been made with regard to the bottom of the barrel proprietary fans that graphics card companies put on their "premium" aftermarket cooling designs, but I'd rather just take it off and put on something that I know is cool and silent.

So, I got my Accelero S3 in the mail today and after screwing around with it for a while I did manage to get it attached to my PNY GTX 970! I used the larger of the two sets of brackets and used the outer most screw holes on the brackets. These fit my 970 perfectly.

For those who may have to do this at some point, I have a couple tips:

First off, after removing the stock heatsink and shroud you'll want to be sure you secure the card's slot cover screw mounts to the PCB wherever the slot cover connected to the old shroud. You can either use a screw and a nut or in a pinch a screw and a matching motherboard stand-off work great.

Second, I have my doubts that this cooler would allow for passive cooling on a GTX 970, so plan on strapping a fan to it somehow.

Third, the placement of the various spacers included in this kit turned out to be VITAL. I had to use the 1mm white\transparent washers between the bracket and the screw nut. The 3mm spacers are too large and prevent the GPU from making contact with the heatsink. Without the 1mm washers though, the gap in the screw threads prevents them from being secure so you MUST use the 1mm washers here. I highly highly advise tightening the screw nuts to the bracket using a small set of pliers or wrench because it causes all kinds of problems if they unscrew while you're tightening the screw on the other end. I did put the super tiny 0.3mm black adhesive washers onto the card's PCB (heatsink side) around the outer set of screw holes to protect the PCB from the nut and to lessen chances of slippage.

On the back side of the card I opted not to use the back plate heatsink since it would have hit my CPU cooler. Much to my surprise, the screws stick out incredibly far from the back of the card... almost a full inch I'd guess. This causes two problems. The first being that the card just plain takes up more space. My sound card had been in the slot above my 970 but this would no longer work, so I had to move it to my bottom PCI-E slot (which isn't that far down since my old P67 still has 2 conventional PCI slots). Thankfully my only other PCI-E device is just a cable that connects to my USB 3.0 front panel, so that fit just fine above the 970 without the screws causing a problem. Still, it would have been nice if they'd included a shorter set of screws for those that weren't using the back plate because I wasn't really intending to move my sound card and now it is partially blocking the cooling fan for the GPU.

The second problem caused by the long screws on the back of the card (when not using the back plate heatsink) is that they actually stick out too far for the long thumb screws (manual refers to them as nuts) that you use to screw the whole thing together. Because of this I had to use both sets of spacers (3mm and 5.5mm) between the long thumb screws and the back side of the card. After figuring this out though, everything went together fairly easily. I could probably swap this off and back on in 5-10 minutes now.

Since I decided that I no longer care what my computer looks like inside as long as its quiet, cool, reliable and easy\cheap to maintain, I ghetto-rigged my 120mm Antec TrueQuiet UFO fan to the heatsink with carefully placed zip ties so that it'd be blowing partially over the VRM heatsink, I also used some more "creativity" and tethered the far end of the heatsink to a screw hole at the top of my tower with a super long twist tie. This wasn't necessary but I didn't like the added weight of the heatsink causing the card to hang down a bit. I don't want it to end up bent at some point. This worked very well. I just have to twist it to tighten it and now the card is level and doesn't budge at all.

After doing a couple other minor adjustments to make sure that my CPU and GPU fans weren't fighting each other, I did some testing. I didn't have a chance to do extensive "before" testing with the 80mm fan strapped to the stock heatsink but I know that it allowed my GPU to creep into the high 70s and low 80s in specific situations the other day. With the S3 and my Antec TrueQuiet set to high my system seemed to top out at around 67C in the same game, and its worth noting that the ambient temp in my office is much warmer today than it was when I tested with the stock heatsink. The sound is also much more pleasant than with the 80mm... though either is an astronomical improvement over the horrid noise the stock heatsink put out. My 970 is also idling at a chilly 30C right now as well, with a room temp around 22C.

For my needs, I think this cooler is fantastic. Hopefully I'll be able to keep this setup running quite a while longer. If I end up upgrading my motherboard+CPU eventually it should allow for a bit more room and I may end up using the S3's backplate for some extra cooling. I could probably do a bit of overclocking now too, should the need ever arise.