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High End Silent Cooling For Graphics Cards

Posted by michael on from the look-ma-no-fans dept.

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."

44 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. What would excite me is a lower price by amichalo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I must be the only one out there but instead of the fancy packaging, colored circuit bords, flashing lights, included CD's filled with shareware games, and ... as of this article ... cooling devices fit for the Red October, I would like a graphics card that ...

    IS IN EXPENSIVE!

    Imagine that graphics card marketing departments. Keep your fluff and give me a lower cost card!

    Of other note, a card shardard for laptops so I could upgrade my PowerBook G4 would be huge for me, expecially as laptops become the PC of choice for the younger, more mobile 20 somethings.

    --
    I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
    1. Re:What would excite me is a lower price by sshannon · · Score: 2, Informative

      Last month when I was building my new computer I was able to get a GeForce 4 (4xAGP, 64MB DDR) for $20 after rebate from Tiger Direct. Granted, it's not the greatest card in the world, and I've never been much of a gamer, but it should be enough for all but the most hardcore of gamers.

    2. Re:What would excite me is a lower price by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Prices are never going to get cheaper. Lowest performing card(for gaming crowd) will be <$75(Radeon9200, GF4-MX) Entry-level cards will always be $75-125(Radeon9500, GF4-Ti4200). Highest end will always be $300-400(Radeon9800, GF-FX). (Will increase due to inflation obviously).

      Why? The chipset designers(ati/nV) try to create one entry for each segment without too much overlap WRT pricing and performace between segments. No one is going to produce cards with older technology when they can use that manufacturing capacity to build other, newer, more profitable cards. Once production has ramped up it never gets cheaper to produce the cards. It does not cost any more to produce a top end card today than it would be to build a Voodoo3.

    3. Re:What would excite me is a lower price by badasscat · · Score: 2, Informative

      Last month when I was building my new computer I was able to get a GeForce 4 (4xAGP, 64MB DDR) for $20 after rebate from Tiger Direct. Granted, it's not the greatest card in the world, and I've never been much of a gamer, but it should be enough for all but the most hardcore of gamers.

      Why was this reply modded down to 0:Troll? The parent asked for cheap graphics cards; this guy explained where to get one. A question was asked and answered. How is that a troll?

      I also bought a GeForce 4 MX from Newegg.com for my HTPC for $44 just about a week ago. No, this is not going to give you Radeon 9800 performance, but you get what you pay for. The nice thing about the graphics card market is that there's something out there for everybody right now. No, the cheap cards don't get the headlines but that's to be expected. The good news is there are highly capable graphics cards out there that will be perfectly satisfying to almost anyone all up and down the line at every price point. You can literally buy an older, slower graphics card for $20-$30 that will give you solid 2D performance and even let you play most 3D games at lower resolutions happily. Or, if you've got the cash, you can shell out for one of the hot new Radeons or GeForce FX's.

      What I usually do is wait until I can double my current performance for around $100. In my main PC I have a GeForce 4 Ti4200, which cost me $108 about a year ago (upgrading from a GeForce 2, which is still a perfectly good card and now lives in a PC I built for my mother). This was one of the fastest cards available at the time and it's still among the fastest today. No complaints here, and I think it'll be a while until I upgrade again - probably not until games really start requiring DirectX 9 capability to work.

    4. Re:What would excite me is a lower price by TheNetAvenger · · Score: 2, Informative

      Of other note, a card shardard for laptops so I could upgrade my PowerBook G4 would be huge for me, expecially as laptops become the PC of choice for the younger, more mobile 20 somethings

      ATI with the new ATI Mobility GPUs are pushing a standard interface for being upgradeable.

      It is up to the manufacturers to take advantage of using this interface though, so with Apple, cross your fingers.

      In the PC world, there are a couple of manufacturers that are already supporting the ATI GPU with the upgradeable interface, so that you will be able to drop in the next faster ATI Graphics Processor when it comes out and not have your laptop locked into the GPU it shipped with.

      I only hope NVidia is working on a similar design or even a compatible design so that a laptop user could switch GPU manufacturers.

      PS - Yes I know that within product lines, you can already rip out most Laptop GPU boards and replace them with the next minimal upgraded versions(i.e. Pull Geforce4 440Go 32mb - Replace with Geforce4 460Go 64mb); however, the ATI interface specification is for moving all the way to an entire new GPU architecture as the technology advances over a few years.

  2. Sacrificing a PCI slot?? by whiteranger99x · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now i noticed that the 9800 Pro is so big, considering the size of the heat sink to disperse the heat generated, users would have to give up the adjacent PCI slot.

    I always thought in some computers the AGP slot and the 1st PCI slot had a shared IRQ, so this wouldn't be an issue...unless im mistaken, of course :P

    --
    Join the TWIT army now!
    1. Re:Sacrificing a PCI slot?? by CaptnMArk · · Score: 2, Informative

      Many new motherboards have 5 pci slots with the same layout that the 6 pci version would have and the first slot is removed. Just for this kind of graphics cards.

      It's definately a must have for my mobo in the future.

    2. Re:Sacrificing a PCI slot?? by Martin+Blank · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Considering that most sound card companies and virtually every NIC company I've researched has advised not putting their cards in the first PCI slot, it kind of becomes moot anyway. Moving those off to other slots leaves modems and what are essentially niche devices -- SCSI, tuner, USB/FireWire, and other add-in cards.

      --
      You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
    3. Re:Sacrificing a PCI slot?? by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Also, NVidia's first generation FX cards (I'm not sure about the ones out now, I'm happy with my gf2mx400 64mb pci) had a fan under it that was large enough to take up the top pci slot.

      --
      Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
  3. This is news? by worst_name_ever · · Score: 4, Funny

    I could already have told you that pipe technology greatly enhances enjoyment of the pretty colors and swirly lights so common in today's high-end games.

    --

    In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
  4. I glad this is happening.. by nother_nix_hacker · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...because my graphics card is louder than my sound card at the moment! :)

  5. Re:silent fans but noisy games.... by rokzy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the problem with noisy graphics cards isn't the noise they make during noisy games, it's the noise they make the other 99.8% of the time

  6. Not as great as you might think by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The problem is that the heatsink is just dumping heat into the cavity of your case, and you will need some serious (and loud) fans to remove it from there. I hate to say it, but only Apple is in a position to make PCs that have wholistic quitet cooling systems installed.

    I think that NVidia were actually on the right track by blowing out the GPU heat into the outside air rather than into the case. Of course, their fan was a monster, but I imagine that this could be done better with a cooler GPU like ATI's.

    1. Re:Not as great as you might think by rokzy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      nvidia was on the wrong track. they HAD to blow the air out of the case because it was so damn hot it would overheat (but that was just due to ridiculous overclocking to compete with ATI). and blowing air will always be noisy, especially if blowing it through small holes.

      the key imo is watercooling for high-end cards, and generating less heat for the mid/low-end cards. AFAIK some .13 micron ATI cards only need passive heatsinks.

  7. Virtually silent? by chabotc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ..fanless coolers on them that are virtually silent..

    Care to explain how graphic cards with no fans, no moving parts at all are virtually silent? The cooling solution is totally passive, and thus makes no noice at all.. if it does, something went very, very wrong and it's probably the sound of the heavy cooling solution breaking your motherboard or graphic card ;-)

    1. Re:Virtually silent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Inductors hum, capacitors explode, resistors melts, ICs whine, etc... Both of my electric razors and my fast ethernet switch have power supplies that make a quiet twittering noise.

  8. Nothing to see here by bahamat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No big news. All they did was take a Zalman vga cooler and package it with the card.

    The only thing that really makes this significant, is that if it comes with the card you can't void your warranty by placing something "too heavy" on it.

  9. What about the rest of the computer? by gagy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've been sleeping next to noisy computers for most of my life. Back in the BBS era I'd have things download overnight, so I'm rather used to to all the noise. But if I was overly concerned with the noise, I wouldn't really care about the vid. card. There are much noisier components in a system, mainly the powersupply and some hard drives can be quite loud. People are now installing two or three case fans as well, adding to the cunundrum. I really don't think that adding one more noisy object to the mix would change things.

    I know that some people spend their fortunes on quiet powersupplies and sound insulation and these cards might be what they're looking for, but for the most part they're a small nieche market.

    --
    -I DDoSed your mom.
    1. Re:What about the rest of the computer? by mr.henry · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I recently upgraded my box with 'quiet' components and it wasn't too difficult or expensive. I took off the stock AMD Athlon heatsink/fan combo and installed a ThermalRight SLK-800 ($40) heatsink and an Pabst 8412N ($17) 80 mm fan. I also took off the rear 80 mm fan on my case and replaced it with a Pabst (another $17). For the power supply, I put in a Nexus NX-3000 ($75).

      For around $150 total, the improvement was pretty dramatic. The only sound I hear from my box now is the hard drive, and if that ever starts to become an annoyance, there are options.

  10. Enough! by Junks+Jerzey · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Slashdotters love to make fun of soccer moms driving big, fuel wasting SUVs, then these same people go out and get monster graphics cards that need crazy cooling nonsense. In all honesty, maybe we've crossed the line here? The little benefit these cards are resulting in (remember, 98% of all games still aren't making use of pixel shaders) is not worth all of the energy waste, not to mention all the wasted materials that go into heat sinks and heat pipes and all of that.

    1. Re:Enough! by gearheadsmp · · Score: 2, Insightful

      remember, 98% of all games still aren't making use of pixel shaders

      Ah, but what you're forgetting is that a vast majority of the games published any given day are crap. Just ask you're nearest game reviewer (ie PC Gamer, Gamespy, etc).

  11. What about... by Enigma1625 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    water cooling? It is becoming more popular and I can only imagine prices will start to become more reasonable. Completely silent, and more effective than fans/heatsinks; what more could you ask for?

    1. Re:What about... by PurpleBob · · Score: 3, Funny

      I still wouldn't want to do it though... I, like the great grandparent, am very wary of having water cursing through my computer.

      Water molecule #38572039471928372: "God damn it - time to cool the fucking CPU again. Why the hell doesn't that piece of shit stop putting out so much fucking heat? Jesus."

      --
      Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
  12. Same old Zalman cooler by steronz · · Score: 3, Informative

    It should be noted that the same coolers have been available from Zalman for some time. That they're now packaged from the factory with this cards should hardly be newsworthy.

  13. Let's get serious on quiet by pair-a-noyd · · Score: 2, Insightful

    When I was a kid my mother used to tell me that silence is golden. I hated to hear those words then. Now I know that she was right.

    I am bloody sick of loud ass hard drives and fans and everything else. The fans are no big deal but the hard drives are the real problem.
    I've yet to see a hard drive that doesn't scream like a small dog in pain. That noise goes through your head like a bayonet.

    I'm building a huge cabinet to put *ALL* of my equipment in made out of an old soda water cooler from a drive in store. It's sound proof and thermally it will keep the heat in so I can duct it out through the ceiling, thus keeping the computer room cool and saving money on the AC cooling bill. It gets damn hot with all the PC's and laserjets and stuff running..

    Let's get some quiet hard drives too folks..
    I'm really sick of noisy machines. I'd even like to have a silent fridge if they make one..

    1. Re:Let's get serious on quiet by Simon · · Score: 4, Informative
      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

      --
      Simon

    2. Re:Let's get serious on quiet by Cordath · · Score: 3, Informative

      Or...

      You could save a lot of effort and just build a quiet PC. In my experience it's a lot cheaper and easier to eliminate noise by the careful selection of noise generating components rather than building large enclosures. Enclosures you might think would block noise can often actually *amplify* it by acting like a horn or resonator.

      Anyways... Here are my current picks for a quiet PC:

      Overclocking: Don't

      CPU Heatsink: Heatsinks change so fast that giving you specific models is pointless. However, as a general rule, if it comes with it's own fan, chances are it's too freakin' loud. Stock HSF combo's from Intel and AMD are right out. Look for a hefty heatsink with a lot of surface area made out of a conductive metal like copper. You can find heat dissipation spec's for most heatsinks online. Odds are you will have to spend 50 bucks or so here, but it's one place not to cheap out. Don't forget to use thermal paste when you install it!

      CPU Fan: If you have a good heatsink installed properly you won't need a freakin' hoover to keep your CPU running cool. The minimum ammount of airflow you'll need is going to depend on how much heat your CPU generates and how well your heatsink dissipates heat. I've found that even a 20CFM (cubic feet per minute) fan will do well even on a high end athlon if you have the right heatsink. For comparison, some stock fans do upwards of 120CFM.

      Graphics Card Cooling: Go passive. Buy a card with a passive cooler or replace the fan. Those little wussy fans they put on graphics card may look innocuous, but many are cheap pieces of crap that will develop a high-pitched and loud whine in short order. Cheap fans, no matter how small, are the bane of silent computing.

      Motherboard Cooling: Ditto. If it has a fan, replace it with a heatsink or don't buy it in the first place. The latter is my personal choice.

      Hard-Drives: Once I would have written pages on suspension techniques, enclosures, network booting, etc. to tell you how to avoid noisy hard-drives. Now I can just tell you to buy Seagate Barracuda's. While other manufacturers are closing the gap, these suckers still have a hefty 6dB lead on anything WD has, and a wider lead for any other manufacturer.

      Case Fans: Guess what. 20CFM fans are all you need here too. I usually have one blow into the case over the hard-drives and another blow out of the case by the CPU cooler, but there are other configurations you can use. The key thing here it to pick high-quality quiet fans. I swear by 20CFM Panaflo's. Three of them (2 case fans, 1 CPU fan) will not be audible over even a very quiet PSU. These fans are about $15 CAD, so aren't bank breakers either. You can get fans that move more air, but don't bother unless you find you need that extra airflow. If you do, add more low-CFM fans to work in parallel rather than installing high-CFM fans. Note that Panaflo makes other 80mm fans with more airflow, but they are much louder. Stick with the 20CFM fanss.

      Power Supply Units: If you've built the rest of your machine properly, the fans in your PSU will be the *only* thing you normally hear. I consider PSU's to be the one item that is lagging behind the rest out there. You can pay a fortune for a fanless PSU such as those TK Power makes, or you can buy a PSU with too much fan noise. Things are getting better though. Antec's Truepower PSU's are high-quality units that are pretty quiet and are also very affordable. They're lightyears ahead of anything Enermax makes anyways. I'd try one of them out first and see if it's too loud for you before resorting to more extreme measures. After that, you can try opening up the PSU and modding the fans to run on lower voltage or use different fans. If all else fails, you can go fanless, but it will cost you bigtime!

      Water-cooling: Since the PSU in a system built under these guidelines is all you'll hear, if you aren't willing to watercool your PSU then there's no point to it at all. Watercooled PSU's have yet to go mainstream, so this is heavy modding territory. I have encountered many watercooling systems where the water-pump alone is noisier than three of my systems. Watercooling isn't where it's at... yet. It may be the future though.

  14. For DIYers on a budget by johnny6vasquez · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The sound was driving me crazy one day so I got out the hacksaw.

    Just take any old stock AMD or P4 heatsink and chop it in half. I didn't have proper heatsink fasteners on my card so drilled it out and zip tied it down. The bottom is still smooth and the paste was properly applied.

    The only problem was getting the stock fan off as it was glued on. I put my card in a ziplock bag
    and chucked it in the freezer for half an hour. Then I used a screwdriver to pry off the fan assembly (with an old library card to protect the pcb).

    Check it out (it's not a swiss watch but it gets the job done).

    Pic 1: http://fullcircletraining.com/images/quiet1.jpg

    Pic 2: http://fullcircletraining.com/images/quiet2.jpg

    You can see I did the same thing to the northbridge on the motherboard.

    happy modding.
    j.

  15. virtually silent? by verbatim_verbose · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Huh... virtually silent? Maybe it's just me, but I don't see how a large block of aluminum can be anything more than completely silent. ;)

  16. Fan reliability by BWJones · · Score: 4, Informative

    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).

    --
    Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
    1. Re:Fan reliability by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 2, Informative

      Two things:

      1: The G4 cube is nowhere near "totally silent" for one reason: hard drive noise. The only reason we don't hear the spinning in most PCs is because of the fans.

      2: HDD noise will decrease over time; I have two Samsung Spinpoint P40 drives which have a DSP designed to reduce seek noise. So the objective should be to make fan noise less loud than the HDD spin noise. Many of the HP Compaq workstations accomplish this with quiet, thermally managed fans.

      So, completely passive cooling is nice. Heck, I have a Zalman in my system. But I also have 3 Panaflo L1A fans and an Alpha 8045. The're all thermally managed and monitored. Thus, fan noise is not an issue. My two HDDs are far louder.

  17. brightly colored PCBs? by Saeger · · Score: 2, Funny
    ...for the Apple trendwhores, right? Because nothing says style and performance like a purple neon card inside your computer. WTF?

    I wonder what these casemodders are going to do for lifestyle status symbolism when personal computing devices finally shrink out of sight over the next decade? Paint their smartcards with glow-in-the-dark paint? Have the OLED display woven into the back of their shirt display the SETI@Home screensaver with a message like "345,000 work units complete, beeyatches!"?

    --

    --
    Power to the Peaceful
  18. I don't even know where to begin. by AntiOrganic · · Score: 2, Interesting

    98% of all games still aren't making use of pixel shaders

    And 80% of games are in 2 dimensions. What's your point?
    I realize this statistic is fictitious and was hastily pulled from my ass; so was yours.

    Most PC applications don't require much more than a 300 MHz CPU and 96 MB of system RAM. What's your point?

    HDTV is being pushed as a standard but most people don't even have S-Video inputs on their televisions. What's your point?

    Some people like technology. Some people like quality better, speed faster, and they want it to be quiet. Sure, these things may chug 50-60W (arbitrary figure, it's probably much, much lower) when they're in use playing a 3D game, but people don't 3D game to to and from work every day.

    And is it really "wasted"? There's a noticeable and beneficial effect. It is by no means the same as driving an SUV alone using the rear cargo area to haul groceries and your daughter's broken bicycle.

    Additionally, you're ignoring the other aspects of SUVs which make them infeasible as car replacements, such as the high rollover rate, the tendency of SUVs to "trip" when hitting small animals such as foxes on the road, or sometimes when the pavement so much as changes texture. SUVs are also regulated as "light trucks" so that they don't have to conform to the same federal safety regulations as normal vehicles. This is due to lobbying on the part of SUV manufacturers, and consumers still buy these deathtraps at premium prices despite how little effort went into making them safe.

    The gas consumption and wastefulness of SUVs are only the tip of the iceberg.

    Besides, you're ignoring the fact that it's a matter of adoption, and scale which determines waste -- you didn't see us yammering about SUVs much when 15000 people drove them because they weren't popular enough to cause a problem.

  19. Re:silent fans but noisy games.... by compwiz3688 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Then get one of those ASUS FX cards that supports the SmartDoctor 2 software.

    I was surprised that when I was testing an ASUS V9520 Video Suite at work, the fan didn't spin until I started playing ga... err running benchmarks. I thought I broke the fan :).

  20. nothing is quieter than ice cubes by AssFace · · Score: 3, Funny

    When my system is running hot, I'll toss a couple of ice cubes onto my video card.

    Totally silent.

    Usually then my system crashes and goes down for a day or so and during that time it almost never overheats.

    Pretty efficient if you ask me.

    --

    There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
  21. Does someone remember the quiet Hercules 64KB? by k.ellsworth · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It was like 10 years ago when we all had fun with "prince of persia" in the all mighty's XT @8mHz...

    I mean the whole computer world has evolved, into GPU's that are faster than CPU's 12 months old, using big smart busses (128, 256 even 512 bits), using DDR3 technology...

    I had a XT, and i spent almost the same daily hours playing that i currently spend today... is just me or is the same but bigger, faster and stronger?

    --
    Putting a windows cd backwards, plays evil messages, but it gets worse, putting it right, installs windows.
  22. The real future by Gossy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is where it's really at.

    http://www.directron.com/fanless.html

    It's a Zalman case that is coming soon. It will cost a lot - but the entire case acts as a big heatsink. They claim it can easily cool the hottest GPU & CPU's out there, assuming your PC room isn't a furnace, I presume. :)

    Here's a japanese link verifying Zalman as the people behind it. http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/hotline/20030 712/etc_tnn500a.html

    This is the holy grail for silent computing enthusiasts!

    1. Re:The real future by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Go to Zalman's forums. They say it will be available in the US in September for $900 to $1100.

  23. Re:Typical lifespan? by Simon · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Does anyone know how long the typical lifespan of such a heatsink is? Would it survive longer than a typical fan-based heatsink? I run my boxes 24x7 and it seems that in a dusty environment - such as my appartment - all fans need to be replaced every year or so.

    I think you just answered your own question. :-) In my experiance fans are _the_ most unreliable components in my systems. I'm using quality fans now and I've replace all fans on my GFX cards with heatsinks.

    I imagine that a heat pipe would last much much longer than any fan. For a start they have almost no moving parts (well, no fiction really), and most of all no _exposed_ moving parts. (The pipe contains a liquid that moves/pumps heat by changing to a gas and back again.)

    --
    Simon

  24. Tom's Hardware Review by Chymaera · · Score: 3, Informative

    Tom's Hardware also has a review of this Zalman heatsink and the Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9700 PRO Ultimate Edition.

  25. I'm not impressed with sapphire's build quality by E1v!$ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    These cards are just standard card's running Zalman's ZM80 cooler.

    I bought one of these for my GF3 and found the kit well made, and easy to install. Overall a good setup.

    I later bought a Sapphire 9700 Pro Ultimate Edition with a ZM80 pre-installed (just like the cards above). The heat synch was improperly aligned, the conduction tube was bent away from the sync and almost NO thermal compound was evident between the tube and the heat sync plates. (Zalman's install instructions stress the importance of maximizing contact area between the plates and the tube)

    I WOULD buy another ZM80, but I wouldn't buy another sapphire card with one pre installed. :(

    IMO stay away from these cards. buy a regular version, and install a passive cooler yourself.

  26. Actually there's little competition by Junks+Jerzey · · Score: 2, Insightful

    With all the competition these days in the 3D Accelerator market

    The vast majority of consumer PCs ship with one of the following:

    1. Intel Extreme Graphics 2 (a motherboard chipset roughly equivalent to a TNT2).
    2. GeForce 4 MX (essentially GeForce 2 with more fillrate, but without programmable shaders).

    The little bit of competition is all at rather small high-end of the market, with nVidia and ATI out diddling each other by a few percent every couple of months. Hardware fanboys excepted, this is uninteresting.

  27. On the Subject of Sapphire Cards by luekj · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I recently purchased a Sapphire 9700;

    It may have not come with a fancy heavy heat sink, but it sure heated up to the point of automatic self-destruction pretty well without much prompting from myself. Needless to say, it was pretty dissapointing.

    When I got the replacement in the mail I had to cool it with a smaller house fan until I went out and purchased a pci fan and placed it RIGHT NEXT to it.

    So, no wonder they're pushing these big cooling rigs.......

    --
    Many Thanks,

    Luke

  28. I have one in my system! by Ianworld · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I love my "silent" computer. It isn't totally silent but the fans in the TV entertainment systems are louder than it.

    The mainstay was getting a silent case(Antec Sonata-Highly recomended) and powersupply. The case has some sound reducing material in the front and a quiet power supply. Using a large heat sink on the processor and a low RPM fan i keep my CPU very cool. I put the Zalman VGA cooler on my 9500 pro and it not only runs great, but actually it also runs cooler.

    The only case fan i have is a large low rpm fan out the back. It all runs like a charm and seems to always be lower than room temperature. (Damn AC is on the opposite side of the apartment.)