They both look pretty naff. Why don't you just get a stock replacement fan from ebay? Or an Arctic cooling or an Evercool Turbo? None are exactly expensive, they look good, perform well and will likely prolong the life of your card. Just MHO, but I wouldn't mess a 9800 up with a cheapo cooler.

A Zalman VF700 might be a good idea too. 9800s only have 2 mounting holes so big sinks like an Arctic Cooling Accelero S2 might be troublesome. Also, the old Arctic Cooling Silencer fans always got noisy over time for me.

I have found an Evercool Turbo 2 for £10 on ebay which looks like a better solution than the two in the original post that I found. The Zalman will cost me £20 and that's just too expensive for such an old card ( bought the card from ebay locally and it only cost me £4, and I begrudge spending 5 times that ammount on a HS+FAN 😁 ).

So thanks for the advice!

By the way Swaaye, do you have a Youtube channel on which you post lots of old cards benching games? I think I've been watching your channel for a long time, if it is you. I am VanillaTek on youtube 😁

Yeah that's me on YouTube. I don't post much but I did the 5900 and 8500 videos along with some Ensoniq stuff.

Have fun with the 9800. 😁

Youtube needs more swaaye videos 😁
I remember watching a video presentation of the then new Lithtech engine (Titan I think?, same one NOLF2 uses) and drooling over the waterfall section (first level of NOLF2) and the reflection on the water.
Never noticed it looked that awesome ingame!

Iris, have you tried loosing the cooling system and giving a good and nice clean? I've found that does the trick most of the times!

Most fans that will fit an early GeForce Card (all the way up to FX 5xxx I believe) should fit on a Radeon 9800 Pro, you just have to be careful the fan's not to big to bump into nearby capacitors.

When fan failed on my old one, I replaced it with a Vantec Iceberq 4, really good quality fan if you can find one. There's also the Iceberq 6, which has a dual slot blower fan and stick-on memory heatsinks if you want to try overclocking. 😜

F2bnp wrote:

Youtube needs more swaaye videos 😁

I just haven't come up with a wacky video project in awhile.

Well I did notice the connector holes from the plastic clips that hold the HS/FAN in place were an odd size compared with most of my spares - and for this reason I was driven towards an Original replacement 9800 HS+Fan. But I begrudge paying more $ than I paid for the card, and buying from somewhere like China or Thailand. Anyways, the ball bearings are shagged in the original fan and I will get the Startech one as a replacement. And Swaaye - I will enjoy it.

Thanks all.

I replaced the fan on my 9800 Pro because it was ultra high RPM and super loud. I had a 60mm fan in the drawer and just attached that. I would like a better cooler because this 256Mb DDR2 card runs hot but yeah why spend money on this stuff.

I don't think I could go fanless with it (ie Accelero) considering how hot the RAM gets. It's really surprising how hot that early DDR2 (or is it GDDR2?) gets. There is some peripheral airflow from the fan to the RAMsinks.

I'd try to find one of the fans that looks like a radial engine from an airplane or a broken card that has one on it. Those are some of the coolest looking stock fans for a 9800 I have ever seen.

I noticed on the 256MB Crucial 9800 PRO AGP, the memory had heatsinks attached to it (8 small square sinks). When I got my card however, it was a 128MB version with no ramsinks, and just the standard 9800pro HS+FAN. Thinking about what you said though, I think I may be able to bodge a fan from somewhere else onto the original HS. Worth a try before I spend money. I have a box of fans somewhere.

sliderider wrote:

I'd try to find one of the fans that looks like a radial engine from an airplane or a broken card that has one on it. Those are some of the coolest looking stock fans for a 9800 I have ever seen.

My 9800XT looks exactly like that, but has a Sapphire brand label over the top.

It's going into my upcoming Socket 478 rig. 😀

Yeah I liked that big half axial / half radial one too. I had a X800XT PE with that cooler and it was surprisingly quiet.

Iris030380 wrote:

I noticed on the 256MB Crucial 9800 PRO AGP, the memory had heatsinks attached to it (8 small square sinks). When I got my card however, it was a 128MB version with no ramsinks, and just the standard 9800pro HS+FAN. Thinking about what you said though, I think I may be able to bodge a fan from somewhere else onto the original HS. Worth a try before I spend money. I have a box of fans somewhere.

The initial 256mb cards used early GDDR2 that ran higher voltage than later DDR2 and got seriously hot. Those RAMsinks aren't there for pretties this time. 😉 Later on they switched to DDR1 and I think final DDR2 and the heat was reduced. 128mb cards are all DDR1 AFAIK.

The GDDR2 is only at 350mhz, slightly above the DDR1 cards, so it's not all that exciting for the heat level. And it needs to be clocked higher because it has higher latency, otherwise it would be slower.

Instead of replacing the cooler, etc, you can also try re-oiling the fan with sewing machine oil. I have salvaged plenty of VGA cooler fans doing this that have totally seized, only to work like new again.