AFOX Radeon HD 6850 Low Profile Review – World exclusive review 11 years ago | Retro

1 - Intro, Overview and Specs 2 - Teardown and Details 3 - Optimizing the cooler: new fans 4 - Noise and Temperatures before and after 5 - Power Consumption 6 - Benchmarks and Conclusion

The Taming of the Shrew

The manufacturer specifies a very optimistic 42 dB as the volume for this card. Unfortunately, we cannot confirm this value, because if you measure perpendicular to the center of the card cover between the two fans at a distance of 50 cm, you still get a proud 48.8 dB(A) on the result sheet.

The cause is the two installed noname fans, which are not only loud with their extremely high speeds, but also produce a very unpleasant sound. Of course, one could have given up in resignation at this point, but our inventory of fans of all shapes and sizes supports curiosity as to whether a small modification might not bring us into the realm of the tolerable.

The solution: Enermax T.B. Silencer 80mm

Our HTPC test case allows maximum fan sizes of up to 8cm. Unfortunately, more is not possible if you want to close the lid cleanly. In addition, an air gap between the fan body and the housing should prevent the acoustic short circuit. After some back and forth, we decided on the T.B. Silencer from Enermax, as this model offers a very decent throughput of 27.93 cfm at 15 dB(A) for a fan that is only 8cm in size, and it already gets by with a maximum of 1600 rpm.

The fans protrude a bit at the top, but this does not bother much. If you like it lower, two small Scythe Mini Kaze with 6cm diameter offer similar performance. Here is another picture from the open test setup, where we also measured the volume:

We connected both fans, which come with a 3-pin connector, directly to the motherboard. Even a full 12 volts per fan do not raise any eyebrows in the sum of both propellers. What is still somewhat audible in the open expansion is almost inaudible in the closed system. The generated sound carpet of the T.B. Silencer is pleasantly neutral and surprisingly medium-frequency for such small fans. The annoying turbine character of the original fans is quickly forgotten. At significantly less than 3.50 Euros per piece, such a fan is not only inexpensive, but also worth a thick recommendation based on the result. We only had to invest a generous 6 euros for the conversion, which was really worth it.