A Fanless Graphics Card from ASUS

mikemuch writes "ASUS has come out with the Extreme N6600GT Silencer/HTD, a GeForce 6600GT without any cooling fan. It's sort of odd looking, with heat sinks that fold on a hinge. Great for home theater since it's silent. Loyd Case of ExtremeTech has put it through a rigorous bunch of benchmarks."

Comments

Not new

[mqRakkis]

Gigabyte has been selling a fanless 6600GT for a while now, the GV-NX66T256D.

Useless

[Snoolas]

I have a 6600GT with a fan, and it isn't loud at all. Just put up with it. You'll never notice the sound difference unless you don't have any other fans in your computer. If you don't have any fans in your computer, you're fried. Water cooling units make noise, unless you have a Zalman reserator. Let the enthusiasts have their fun...

Re:Useless

[AKAImBatman]

Personally, I agree with you. But for some people, the fan noise is REALLY bothersome. Especially those who have tuned their ears to hear with precision. (i.e. The audiophile.)

That being said, I think the problem tends to be exasperated by poor cases. One of the primary points you have to look for when chosing a case is "does air flow well?" The case should be roomy enough to allow air to flow smoothly from the front of the case to the rear. Usually you'll have a fan in the rear of the case, but having mounts available for one in the front is usually not a bad idea either.

More fans can mean less RPM per fan for the same cooling. If it's slow enough, it should be practically impossible to hear. This concept is used heavily in the PowerMacs which have a boat-load of fans that spin at very low RPM.

If your case is too small or two crowded, what you'll see is a buildup of heat. This buildup will be noticed by the components such as the video card which will immediately spin the fan up to a higher RPM in an attempt to reduce the heat levels. And thus you end up with: a very noisy computer.

The 6600 silencer works great.

[leoxx]

I just built an AMD X2 3800 system with the 6600 (non-GT) Silencer for my wife, who is not a video game player, and it is cool, quiet, cheap and plenty fast for what she needs. Combined with the Antec Sonata II case it makes for probably the nicest Linux system I have ever put together.

Re:Fanless

[$RANDOMLUSER]

If you were talking about their motherboards, I'd agree; but I've found that their graphics cards tend to be pretty standard Nvidia reference cards. I tend to buy last years "top-of-the-line" cards, and I've owned a few of theirs without any problems.

Re:Um... but

[Smidge204]

The way I read it, the radiator is large enough to safely handle the load without any forced convection.

However, they mounted the heat pipe and radiator on a hinge so that, if you have a CPU fan, you can get an added benefit without adding another fan.

Failing that, you can rotate it to avoid other things in the case and get optimal orientation for natural convection/other drafts.
=Smidge=

Re:Overkill

[Jeffrey Baker]

Eh? A Matrox Millienium was perfectly able to scale and convert the colorspace of 1920x1080 video. That card had no fan and came out 8 years ago (at least).

Re:Fanless

[AKAImBatman]

What's so bad about ASUS boards? I've usually found them to be pretty reliable, and currently recommend the A8N-[E/SLI] boards to people. Is there something wrong I should know about?

Then again, I usually wait for the early adopters to help companies work out the bugs before making a purchase. I've heard from several people that the ASUS boards can be buggy, but they always seem to be fine by the time I get to them.

Gigabyte has a similar model

[Stack_13]

Gigabyte has a similar model: a heatpipe-cooled Gigabyte Geforce 6600GT with a easy-to-remember name of Gigabyte GV-NX66T128VP. Tom's Hardware has a review of the card. AGP version is also available with a similarly easy model name of GV-N66T128VP.

I have a PCI Express version of the card in my rig, and it is nice. Gets too hot to touch after running GPU-intensive applications, but those NV chips should be designed to run hot (and they have a thermal protection which throttles down the GPU if it gets overheated).

Nice to see other manufacturers to notice that people like to have their computers silent.

I have a similar card without a hinge...

[NIN1385]

I bought a ASUS 128mb video card about two months ago from newegg. The card has no fan on it, and run relatively cool considering the games I play with it. I paid a mere $42 plus shipping and I couldn't be happier with the performance I got with it.

I would recommend any ASUS product so far, havent had any problems with my motherboard or video card, both ASUS. If your looking for a cheap, powerful video card with a few high-end features, these cards are ideal. Good work ASUS.

Depressing...

[Brain_Recall]

This is simply a depressing review of a unique product (in the sense it's ASUS's first attempt at a silence card cooler). The 6600GT is only compared to the new 7800GT (guess who wins?). There are no attempts at comparing the system to anyone elses silent cooling system (or active systems, for that matter). The whole review gives the feel that this is ExtremeTech's first 6600 to fall upon them.

What really bothers me, though, is they give no tempreature readings whatsoever. How much does the CPU temp go up with the radiator above the heatsink fan, or to the side? What are the temps on the card, with and without active cooling? Would you need to upgrade your CPU heatsink/fan to keep the processor from overheating?

They totally glossed over the shinning parts of the card and stamped out another reviewtisment.

Re:Since when did they need fans?

[DrunkenTerror]

Playing games made this millenium?

I buy about 1 game a year, but my last 4 or 5 video cards, stretching back to that old Kyro VR, have had fans.

Re:Since when did they need fans?

[Joe the Lesser]

Try something more intense, like a mmorpg. If my fan isn't running during EQ2 or FFXI, the graphics card overheats and shuts down the PC.