I recently became excited about my Voodoo card again. I'm a long time fan and I've owned a card from every major generation. My V5 lasted the longest thanks to the talented individuals who worked on the drivers. To understand the timescale, I bought my V5 very soon after it being available in Canada and only finally replaced it with a 6800 GT. Amazing scalability! I decided to keep this card. Now, after years of neglect, I'm gonna pimp it out.

I'm pretty impressed with the results. Sorry I don't have pictures at this time. I can post some this weekend when I have access to a decent camera. I'll describe my doings the best I can and post links to the parts I used.  

The bearings in both my fans were bad and made a sloshing noise when spinning. Since the card was being installed in my server, which sometimes runs at night, those fans had to go. Using a Zalman ZA-MFC2 for testing temperature(T) and electrical consumption, I found that my server idles at 90W and sips 15 more Watts while gaming. I also noticed the temperature doesn't really fluctuate between load and idle conditions. The V5 was a hot running card but I figured it could be run fanless with quality heatsinks and decent airflow within the case. I decided on using copper from Enzotech and the Coolermaster Sileo 500 for the chassis.

Here are the parts I used:
http://www.enzotechnology.com/cnb_r1.htm
http://www.enzotechnology.com/bmr_c1.htm
http://www.coolermaster.com/products/product.php?language=en&act=detail&id=5843

I started with the stock V5 5500 AGP with noisy fans.

T Heatsink:
- GPU 1: 58
- GPU 2: 45
T PCB Top of GPU:
- GPU 1: 66
- GPU 2: 51

After 6 hours of carefully removing epoxy, I finally freed the heatsinks and proceeded to install an Enzotech CNB-R1 on each GPU. None of the brackets that came with the heatsink lined up with the holes on the PCB, so I modified the orange bracket with a small file (more fun for my wrists). I left the computer side panel open and did some testing.

T Heatsink:
- GPU 1: 65
- GPU 2: 53
T PCB Top of GPU:
- GPU 1: 77
- GPU 2: 64 - Holy smokes! I shut it off at this point, but noted there were no scanlines or artifacts displayed on the monitor.

I then installed a Enzotech BMR-C1 on top of the PCB, centered behind each GPU (a perfect fit). I left the computer side panel open and did some more testing.

T Heatsink:
- GPU 1: 60
- GPU 2: 49
T PCB Top of GPU:
- GPU 1: 63
- GPU 2: 55

This was great. I was now ready to test with the case side panel on, just like it would when running at night. But before I did, I noticed that the intake (the one at the front) fan's exhaust was blocked by the metal bracket where you install the harddrive. I unscrewed this and removed it completely, and installed the harddrive into one of the 3.5" floppy bays. No cooling for you, Mr. Harddrive.

Right now, after about 24h of server uptime:

T Heatsink:
- GPU 1: 53
- GPU 2: 37
T PCB Top of GPU:
- GPU 1: 55
- GPU 2: 41

These are heavy heatsinks (solid copper) too, I was concerned about the weight but it was ok when installed. Even the weight of 2 of these heatsinks do not sag the card down at all.

So now the PSU fan is the only thing audible. It's a 2 wire 80cm fan that's not too bad as far as PSU fans go. What's amazing is if I stop this fan with a toothpick, temporarily my server is almost silent, I can hear electrical noises emanating from it! Tonight, I hope to complete my final mod for now: To rig the PSU fan to run at 5V instead of 12V. That should quiet it down and still cool it enough, since I never go above 105W.

That's it, my experiment was a success and I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Please share your thoughts and your experiences, maybe you've modded a fanless V5 too? And offer suggestions for mods I can do to my card. My goal is a badass V5 rig that's both powerful and silent.