Originally posted by: coolkatz321
I was reading about the soft fix, but the whole thing about Power Play is confusing me... I have a Gigabyte card, and it certainly appears to me that I don't have powerplay... when idle, it clocks in around 77C, which I'm guessing should be cooler. Rather than laying a fan on the card, if I had one pointed at it in the PCI slot, would that work too? I was also hoping for a solution that wasn't too noisy...
If you have a PCI slot directly underneath the card and it has enough room underneath that slot to draw in air, it will work.
Something like
this.
However, if you are willing to lose the PCI slot below the card, you may as well fit an aftermarket cooler if you have an early 4850. You'd be rid of any issues with powerplay, fan speeds and all the other shite in one fell swoop.
Addtionally, if you are looking for a quiet solution, there's none better than
this. You'll lose a PCI slot like you would with a PCI slot fan, but what you'll also lose is a bit of noise too because this cooler will idle a 4850 at about 50-55 passively in a well-ventilated case. With a 120mm fan strapped to it, it will idle at about 30-35C and load at 45ish. Fitting one of these to a 4850 is much easier than you think, check
this out.
It's worth the effort, you basically fit it, monitor temps initially to check it's seated correctly, and then forget about it.
And in your case, you are prepared to spend money on a PCI slot fan. That cash would be more gainfully used to get a good cooler instead.