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Yeah you can't put the exact same heatsink on them but take a look at the Accelero S1 Rev. 2 at http://www.arctic-cooling.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=2_&mID=105&language=en

You even putting a 120mm fan on it doesn't cover the entire fin area. http://www.silentpcreview.com/article793-page5.html

Yeah with fan it'll be a 3 slot solution and yeah it only weighs half the weight of a high end CPU heatsink but then again that is not their biggest GPU heatsink.

The heaviest solution on AC's site is the Accelero XTREME 4870X2 at 680g which is getting up there for weight on a graphics heatsink. http://www.arctic-cooling.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=2_0&mID=244&page=spec

I'd say its more of an issue that pure clock speed only covers some GPU problems. Memory bandwidth/latency, number of GPU cores, design of the cores, programming issues are all more difficult to balance than just ramping up the clock. They could cool these chips better but would it really be worth the cost/effort if the rest of the design and supporting software can't take advantage of it?

Yeah you can't put the exact same heatsink on them but take a look at the Accelero S1 Rev. 2 at http://www.arctic-cooling.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=2_&mID=105&language=en

You even putting a 120mm fan on it doesn't cover the entire fin area. http://www.silentpcreview.com/article793-page5.html

Yeah with fan it'll be a 3 slot solution and yeah it only weighs half the weight of a high end CPU heatsink but then again that is not their biggest GPU heatsink.

The heaviest solution on AC's site is the Accelero XTREME 4870X2 at 680g which is getting up there for weight on a graphics heatsink. http://www.arctic-cooling.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=2_0&mID=244&page=spec

I'd say its more of an issue that pure clock speed only covers some GPU problems. Memory bandwidth/latency, number of GPU cores, design of the cores, programming issues are all more difficult to balance than just ramping up the clock. They could cool these chips better but would it really be worth the cost/effort if the rest of the design and supporting software can't take advantage of it?

I got a pretty good deal on a 3850 a while ago. The reviews (real reviews and customer reviews) consistently said that it had a fairly quiet fan on it, but there were a fair number of people saying it wasn't really quiet at all. I got mine and I have no idea how anyone can consider that shrill whine to be 'quiet'. I tried cutting the fan down to 15-20% to see how that was, and surprisingly, that made the fan spin faster (I guess it was at ~10% by default). I ended up ordering an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1, which has been absolutely wonderful (my older passive VGA cooler wouldn't mount on the 3850). I've used a few of their case fans and proc fans and I can't recommend their stuff enough. Very QUIET high quality parts for fairly cheap. Oh yeah, just the cooler running passively has lower temps than the stock cooling fan, so you don't even need the fan add-on most of the time.

I don't know about that. I have Mac Pro and at the time I could not buy any other machine with same performance, fantastic design (and it matters to me: the cooling solution is brilliant, everything is accessible and above all, the machine is ultra quiet).

Back in the days it looked nice, but now it's quite mediocre / dull / boring imho. The design has never been good for space usage.

Take this case for example:
http://www.coolermaster.com/products/product.php?language=eu&act=detail&id=5366

And then a graphic card cooler like this:
http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.php?idx=147

And something similar for cpu, or water cooling which you can easily get within the same budget.

Q9550 is really cheap now, quad 2.83 GHz 12 MB cache, what does the current Mac Pro have?

DDR2 memory are more or less given away.

Similar HDDs and DVD-burners won't cost much at all.

HD4850 / HD4870X2 will kill the Mac Pro and still don't cost much.

Get a Corsair power supply. Feel free to tell me where mac pros performance is superior or where the cooling solution is better or where it's more affordable.

Now just buy the base config from Apple and upgrade the rest yourself for much less.

FB-DIMMs cost a lot, you can't get whatever graphics card but only special old slow ones for a huge markup from Apple, and you still pay a lot for the crap you get even at base configuration.

Of all the things Mac Pro does and has, the fact that is is running cool and with NO NOISE or rattle of any kind is worth a lot to me.

And you don't think the $1000 saved can buy you a better cooling solution?

People will easily pay (and I have) several thousand dollars extra for a quiet case, quiet hard drive enclosure, quiet power supply etc and still won't have as quiet system.

Uhm, VGA cooler 40 dollar or so, CPU-cooler something similar, then what? I think 100 dollar or so would be enough for a similar air cooled solution.

The case in question will make some noise FROM THE AIR MOVING THRU IT, but the fans are 23 cm at 1500 rpm so I doubt they make much of a noise, and the VGA cooler is passive, and if you don't over clock a passive CPU cooler probably works just fine in it as well.

Water cooling will of course be even more quiet.

I built my PCs for ages, and spent up to $5000 and still could not have as well made system.

Too bad you suck at getting good parts then.

Macbook and Macbook pros are beautiful machines and a joy to use. Everything from the looks to the OS is well put together and to some of us that is worth the money.

Yeah, I especially like how Safari use all my ram within a day, how applications crash all the time since Safari is using all RAM, how hot the machine gets.
How shitty the TN-panel is and the low 1440x900 resolution of it, how the keyboard makes marks on my screen.
The poor audio quality of the headphones output, the annoying super bright white diode keeping me awake at nights while the machine is at sleep.
How frickin' noisy the machine is since Safari and Flash for OS X sucks balls and how insanely hot the bottom of the enclosure gets since they have pressed it all together within 1 inch without sufficient cooling.
The poor quality of the build (excessive thermal grease and lose aluminium frame around the button releasing the screen.)
And how much bad configuration the machine was with 128 MB vram for an 8600m GT but still top of the line 2.2 GHz CPUs. No way Apple could had put an extra 30 dollar on getting a decent amount of VRAM in all models!?!

I have not seen a single PC or laptop that I would want to buy at any price segment. Just look

No, but I read about it in some thread when I was picking components for a friends new machine. (He won't get that but I guess someone in another thread wanted a passive solution so he was recommended the 9600 GT or something like that.)

Yeah, they seem very cheap for what you get, they have solutions with fans to, which of course will make some noice but on the other hand give an even colder setup vs stock and still run much quiter according to the webpage.

I think they had a CPU cooler which is supposed to handle the CPU with no fan to. Or well, maybe not:
http://www.arctic-cooling.com/cpu2.php?idx=162&disc=
Fatest one, has a fan, but 120 mm so probably not much noise. Also for up to 160 watt and I don't believe an unclocked Intel is close to that.

Oh well, soon winter, just build your own heatpipe system ventilating out on the balcony ;)

This won't help for this card, but it would help if you got a regular graphics card instead:
http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.php?idx=147

They have other solutions as well.

• What's the thermal output differences between the older chips and the new?

• Has nVIDIA improved their cooling fans at all or will we still have to get third party cooling devices?

Seriously, I've have an overheated nVIDIA card blow up and take out a motherboard with it.

The TT SI-97 costs about $45 CDN, while a VGA Silencer costs about $30 CDN. I use a VGA silencer and it's a pretty nice product, so I'm curious why it was not included in the benchmarking.