High End Silent Cooling For Graphics Cards

SpinnerBait writes "With all the competition these days in the 3D Accelerator market, Graphics Card OEMs are doing anything they can to differentiate their products in a sea of competitive solutions. Recently board designs are getting even more exotic, with brightly colored PCBs, high end heat sink and fan combinations and even flashing lights for the case modders out there. However, a relatively new trend is Quiet Computing. HotHardware has an article up that showcases two new Radeon 9600 Pro and 9800 Pro cards from Sapphire Tech, that have rather impressive fanless coolers on them that are virtually silent. Great stuff for those of you gaming in the library."

Comments

Fan reliability

[BWJones]

The other issue we are going to be having is fan reliability. In servers, we can tell if fans go bad through notification. However, when the fan on my GeForceTi gave up the ghost last week, I only knew about it because I was in the case adding a card. With the proliferation of fans in computers, I would like to see either 1) built in software checks to identify fan status, or 2) more efficient passive cooling techniques that don't require fans. Having a truly silent PC on your desk is pretty nice as illustrated by the Apple Cube connected to a flat panel. Totally silent as opposed to my other workstations (Apple included).

Re:Let's get serious on quiet

[Simon]

Have you tried suspending your drives? It can be done cheaply and makes a big difference.

There are some good drives these days that are very quiet. Seagate Barracuda series drives are legendary among the Quiet PC crowd. Although other manufacturers are also bringing out quiet drives.

If you really want a silent computer you might as well get some information:

How to Quiet the Thing
Silent PC Review

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Simon