ATITool Fan Control causes high pitched whine

[cyclocommuter]

I just replaced my ATI X850 Pro with an ATI X850 XT mainly because I liked the way the XT's cooling exhausted hot air outside the case. I also found the Pro slightly underpowered when playing games in widescreen resolutions (1920 x 1200). Currently, I am very pleased with the better overall cooling (cpu/case temps have dropped) and the added performance that the XT now gives me.

There is just one problem: I find the XT's fan at idle speeds a little too noisy so I installed ATITool used it to set the fan to spin slower. It did but the fan noise was replaced by a high pitched whine or squeal. Has anyone noticed this when reducing the speed of the fan with ATITool? I am using ver 0.24.

[trog100]

if u want quiet and efficent cooling i would invest in one of the aftermarket VGA coolers.. the Artic one is very good and they are cheap for what u get..

i am a bit surprized u found your x85o pro only "slightly" underpowered at 1920 x 1200... he he he

i might be a bit odd but with the current crop of games i find myself useing 1024 x 764 more than often.. or the widescreen 1200 by whatever it is.. the resolution u quote seems way over the top..

trog

[cyclocommuter]

Thanks for the response trog100... I guess I have to look into investing in something like the ATI Arctic Cooling Silencer if I want a quieter solution. Zalman is probably out of the question as I want to keep my case and CPU temps low by having the vga cooler blow hot air outside the case just like the XT's stock cooler does.

I should have qualified my other comment in that I found the Pro slightly underpowered at 1920 x 1200 when playing HL2 and CS2. It IS underpowered at 1920 x 1200 when playing the latest games like FEAR and COD2... I basically had to lower resolutions to 1440 x 900 to play these games on the Pro. The XT OTH allows me to play them at 1920 x 1200 with AA turned off.

[Poisonsnak]

Yeah I would maybe throw this post in the ATITool section and W1zzard may be more likely to respond, I know there's that "Do not change base PWM frequency (X850)" checkbox, I don't know if this is related to the whine but maybe try it checked and unchecked and see if there's a difference.

For reference though I have the Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer 5 Rev.2 running 5% regardless of load and it's fairly quiet, no squeals certainly.

[cyclocommuter]

Yes I tried that checkbox but it had no effect... high pitched whine/squeal was still there. I will repost this to the ATITool section and hopefully they can suggest a workaround.

I am checking out the ATI Silencer 5 Rev.2 but it appears if I go with this solution I will have to mod it as one of the capacitors in my motherboard will definitely hit one of the thumbscrew holding the memory heatsink (the one on the top facing the CPU) in place. I might have to cut out that piece of the heatsink with the thumbscrew (the one closest to the MB).

[cyclocommuter]

Okay, I finally read the documentation on ATITool's Fan Control (http://www.techpowerup.com/wiki/doku.php/atitool/fan_control). It appears I have to reboot after checking the option. I will report my findings after I have done so. If this works I will most likely stick with the stock cooler...

EDIT: I have rebooted with the checkbox checked and this solved the whine/squeal problem! Kudos to ATITool!

Using ATITool, I set the fan at 9% speed up to 45C, 14% above 45C, 32% above 50, 41% above 60, 50% above 70C, 100% above 75C. The temps never went beyond 66C despite playing the "Test" mode of FEAR 6 to 7 times. Previously the VPU would reach temps up to 72C. It appears without using ATITool, the fan would just run in one speed at least up to the 72C that I was getting.

That makes me wonder why ATI would prefer to run the fan under one speed setting...