Galaxy 9600GT Low Profile Low Power Review
Packaging and Accessories
Galaxy’s 9600 GT Low Profile Low Power comes in a fairly large box compared to the card’s size. The box features a tiger on its cover, which is a relief from all the mech warriors and CG women with swords on some of the boxes from other manufacturers. I would like to mention here that although the box says that this card is SLI ready, it is infact NOT as you will see later in the review.
The box design and labeling is an important part of catching the consumer’s attention in retail locations especially now that Galaxy sells its cards in Best Buy stores. The box labels the features of the card pretty clearly. It advertises the 2-year warranty that comes with the card and a toll-free number, should you have any technical difficulties with the card. It’s nice to see Galaxy mention the power supply requirements on the box and the ideal use of such low height cards – i.e. HTPCs (Home Theater Personal Computer). Another nice feature is the mention that a standard height adapter is included. This will ensure that people with regular PCs are not turned off from buying this card off retail shelves.
On opening the box, a yellow flyer greets you. Included on it is a tech support number and email if you have a problem with the card. Although most vendors give a certain time for return if your purchase is out of this time period, you can still setup a RMA with Galaxy by using this email or the toll-free number.
Included accessories are: driver CD, installation manual, HDMI installation guide, user manual, SPDIF cable, DVI-VGA Adapter. In the above screen you see the Low Profile Bracket which was taken off from the card to fit it in a normal mid-tower case. Its pretty easy to fit the card with the included standard height bracket. Its just a matter of loosening 2 screws.
Hi. I think this is a great looking card. I would love to put in my machine (acer small form desktop, amd dual core, 4gb ddr2) But I worry about power load because my machine has a teeny tiny 220watt psu. I can’t and don’t want to upgrade because the psu is a proprietary acer form that I cant upgrade easily. It sucks.
What would I risk trying this card on my machine? How can I find out if this would be suitable for my situation? Thanks and great review!!
I think it should be fine
thanks!
Update:
Just got this card, put it in my small form Acer. It’s very snug and it gets really hot, but it seems to work fine. I drilled some extra holes in the case, but maybe I need some more. Right now it’s idling at 61 C after cooling off from a short time under load where it reached 80 C. I don’t know if this is normal or not. No crashes yet, but I guess I’ll continue to baby it a bit.
Thanks for this great article!
Update #2:
I’ve been using this card for a while with no problems, but recently it has been overheating.
The fan seems to come on and off, sound loud and strange, and generally run inconsistently. I’m not sure if there is a way for me to manually control the fan or if that would help.
Concerning GPU temperatures, sometimes, things are fine. The GPU temperature will stay at 50-60C while doing basic tasks, watching youtube videos, etc. No problem. Other times the temperature will rise to 90 C or more simply running Windows 7. Sometimes, with a load on the GPU, the temperature will rise to 125 C causing the card to shutdown. This will happen with loads from high resolution gaming or just youtube videos (not even fullscreen!). Then again other times, I can game for 45 minutes getting temperatures getting on up to 80 C with 75% fan speeds.
This is probably not the ideal place to post this, but since I posted here earlier, why not…
Mine did the same thing. The fan is buggered, noisy at first, then noticed when I had the lid off that when it wasn’t just noisy/vibrating but stalling and strugling to turn. I sent it back to supplier (you have to remove the heatsink held by tape to replace yourself thus voiding waranty) and 3months later I am about to get it back. Hope it does not do it again.
Oh and I used a manual controller as at high speeds it was quieter but in the end still faulty.