6800GT 10 degrees cooler with duct

[Equalizer]

I had a couple of these slot blowers lying around and wasn't sure how well they would work with the card sucking in and the blower pushing out. I thought it might mess with the airflow too much.

I decided to pull the back plates off my case to see if it dropped my temps any and to my surprise the temps went down by about 6 degrees. To make it look better I decided to take the plates off the fans and mount them on the empty back plates.

Here is the end result:

 

[R8DERHED5150]

Well I haven't tooken the fan out, but its sitting right under my 6800U and I haven't notice any difference in temps. And when I feel the back, its only cold air, but my card is idling at 56C

It doesn't work with the fan in and running. The point is to mod the whole fan unit. That means taking out the fan and just using the housing for a so-called Cold Air Intake. If you leave the fan in running (I'm sure if the fan is not running, its still quite restcitive), you are actually robbing the card of air circulation which is the reason why you are not getting better temps.

Once again, if you want this cheap and simple mod to work that doesn't void your warranty, you MUST remove the units fan and trim up the hole so that it matches up with the cards intake hole. This is the only way it will work. Unless you find a slot cooling unit with a fan that will allow you to reverse polarity, then that would be even better.

 

[wearefree]

Apperantly these will help, and seems like a lot gain for a little money. However, can someone comment on the noise level before and after puting the air duct? Simply removing the pci slot cover shouldn't have any change in the noise level (if not go up, since now the noise is no longer muffled in the case but directly hearable). I have heard these cards aren't particular quiet, and one big selling point of Zalman is their "quietness".