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

Fanless

[mysqlrocks]

A Fanless Graphics Card

Did anybody else read this as a graphics card that nobody likes?

Re:Fanless

[Tatarize]

Did anybody else read this as a graphics card that nobody likes?

YES! You noticed it was from ASUS too?

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: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.

Re:Fanless

[PhotoBoy]

Seconded, I've had motherboards from Gigabyte, Abit, Shuttle and Epox (and Asus of course) and I've always found the Asus boards to be excellent, both stable and with lots of excellent features.

Compared to the piece of shit Shuttle SN25P I recently had that kept destroying my RAID array I would certainly be interested to hear what the grandparent doesn't like about Asus motherboards.

Re:Fanless

[theantipop]

There are some issues if you are trying to build a top-of-the-line system with the Asus boards. I own an A8N-E and with fast timed Corsair ram the board won't play nice. I would put the problem on Corsair (since they used to lie about their timings) but others have reported problems with other brands as well. I don't mean to say they make horrible products, I have been pretty happy with mine, but they have lost their outstanding reputation among enthusiasts which they had held for a long time.

Re:Fanless

[WraithRealm]

I myself will never again recommend ASUS boards to any of my customers. Not only are they prone to small failures like being unable to read the CPU fan speed to crashing onboard components, but with the exception of one board (which I later found out *had* broken - it just wasn't important enough to count) almost every ASUS board I've used in both my machines and a co-worker's machines have intermitent "connection" problem with the Southbridge. I don't know how many times I got called out to figure out what was wrong with a Network or Audio card, and it turns out to be a faulty PCI bus. Thank you ASUS, you won't be gettin' any of my business ever again.

And this video card with no fan, relying on *heatsinks* where other manufacturers recommend *water cooling* ... Watch the failure rates on these puppies. No thank you!

8 out of 10

[geomon]

I guess the utility of this card is based on how demanding your game is. Looks like it gets "hammered" quite a bit by the GeForce card.

Silence can be expensive.

Re:8 out of 10

[Stuart Gibson]

I run a fanless Gigabyte X800XL that has no issue with the current games. Sure it isn't 1600x1200 with maximum AA and AF, but an easy 1280x1024 with sensible AA and AF (and eye candy on full) with the current benchmark games (HL2, Far Cry etc).

Doesn't seem like this is something that new, I've had my card for a few months now.

Stuart

Re:8 out of 10

[Total_Wimp]

The article actually mentions other fanless solutions. It point out that the thing making this card unique is the swiveling heat sink/pipe that takes advantage of the airflow from your CPU cooler.

I think the twisting alone buys it a mention, but I think it could be made better. What we really want is for the thing to twist automatically with a loud WHIRRRR and then click into place with a satisfying Ker-Chunck. And it should do this only when it starts to heat up, like right after you start your game. Then a sexy voice should say, "cooling system operating at maximum capacity captain."

That's what we all want, right? You with me? Guys? (grumble. head down) "ok, back to the basement."

TW

Um... but

[Allen Zadr]

It seems to depend on a CPU fan. Hardly "silent". Your just eliminating one fan from a multi-fan system. How would it work on a fanless CPU setup?

Somehow I'm thinking fried silica.

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:Um... but

[markdesign]

what if.. AMD does come out with a fanelss cpu where a big heat sink would stick out toward the video card's fan.

Overkill

[Radres]

Great for home theater since it's silent.

Or you can just buy a cheap old 2D card with no 3D acceleration since all you are doing is rendering video!

Re:Overkill

[Tha_Big_Guy23]

Or you can just buy a cheap old 2D card with no 3D acceleration since all you are doing is rendering video!

Well, the problem with that solution is that the older 2D cards aren't fast enough to display the full screen rendering of high definition video. Granted, all we're doing is 2D, but at the point at which it's put into a home theater setup, the video card is taking most of the grunt work of decoding the video from the processor. At least, that was how I thought it was working these days.

Re:Overkill

[Tiger4]

No dammit! Not good enough. I must have the fastest 30fps video rendering available!!

Re:Overkill

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but the second I buy an old 2D rendering card a newer 2D rendering card will come on the market and mine will be obsolete.

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:Overkill

[fyrie]

No offense, but you are obviously not in the know of what it takes to run a HTPC. Upscailing DVD to HD with an upscaling such as ffdshow is extremely GPU intensive. I am running a 6600gt and it BARELY makes the cut for 1280 720p. I have read that a 6600 won't do 1080i, but a 6800 will.

Re:Overkill

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you can just buy a cheap old 2D card with no 3D acceleration since all you are doing is rendering video!

So you've got this P4 class machine hooked up to a 60" hdtv screen with surround sound ... you and/or your kids aren't going to be mighty tempted to pop in a game or two?

Sorry. I don't buy that.

Re:Overkill

[Jeffrey Baker]

That must be some ass-bad programming, because I just tried scaling a DVD to full screen on a 2048x1536 display, and it worked perfectly well on a Rage 128, a Matrox Millenium II, and a Matrox G400, all of which are at least 4 years out of production. The r128 is in a machine with a 400MHz PowerPC, too. So if you are having trouble getting 720p output from modern hardware, your software is to blame.

Re:Overkill

[Jeffrey Baker]

I do think the HTPC community is generally ignorant and ill-informed, yes. But the graphics manufacturers are not retarded, they are exploitative: they see this mass of ignorant, ill-informed people as an opportunity to sell some $400 parts. And here you are, claiming that video scaling is anything other than a simple filtering operation.

Unless of course you would like to share the magical secret of video scaling which you seem to think was not implemented in hardware until after 2002.

I won't hold my breath.

*Now* they make one

[AKAImBatman]

But sometimes, you just want a little silence. For example, if you're building a home-theater PC, you'll want as quiet a system as possible.

Well, that would have been nice to be able to recommend when I wrote this article. I had also recommended an Asus GeForce 6600, albeit one that didn't cost quite as much. For myself (not being an audiophile), the cheaper card works fine as it rarely spins up to any noticable volume while I'm watching TV. I can understand, though, that for others the background noise can be very annoying.

As you can see, the card is actually designed to take advantage of a preexisting CPU cooling fan to blow air over the passive radiator. If you have a standard active cooling mount, then this is an innovative idea. But it does limit your choice of CPU coolers. For one thing, your processor heat sink can't be taller than the bottom of the card.

So what they're saying is that the ASUS Star Ice Jet Engine^W^W CPU Fan isn't going to work with this card? What a shocker. ;-)

(No, I won't let go of it. I've still got mine sitting on my desk, just so I can get all the "What the hell is that?" comments. )

Nvidia's upcoming Release 80 drivers include a number of enhancements for HDTV, including the ability to minimize overscan problems, something which has plagued home-theater PCs for years.

This reminds me, has anyone had any experience with this or any other HDTV-compatible cards that don't cost an arm and a leg? I'm still avoiding HD for now, but it's likely to catch eventually. To date I haven't seen too many inexpensive HDTV tuner cards. Then again, maybe I'm not looking hard enough?

Not new

[mqRakkis]

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

Re:Not new

[piquadratCH]

Great job. You just fucked up ASUS' well paid commercial. Pay attention next time. ;-)

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.

Re:Useless

[karnal]

I have a 6600gt with a fan in my main gaming machine, and I would not want to add that kind of noise - no matter how insignificant you may find it - to my home theater machine.

As such, I went with a fanless Asus FX5200. Turns out that the NVidia DVD/MPEG2 decoder does the best job on this decently powerful system as a PVR box. Plus, the less fans I have, the less "whoosh" noise. Which in a home theater/PVR environment is a necessity.

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:The 6600 silencer works great.

[ryanvm]

I just built an AMD X2 3800 system with the 6600 (non-GT) Silencer for my wife; it is cool, quiet, cheap and plenty fast

And I'll bet she still complains that you never do anything sweet. Women...

Should work in free air

[CaptainFork]

In a closed PC, this device will basically rely on the power supply's fan to circulate air around the heatsink. But if you were to run your PC with the case open (as open as possible) there should be sufficient free-air cooling.

You should keep your room cool (which you should do anyway when gaming because warmth will make you soperific and slow your reactions). You may also want to use a mosquito net or other gauze-like sheild to stop dust accumulating on your hardware.

This isn't new!

[mustafap]

I've had a fanless graphics card since 1983. Still got it. Hercules MDA.
Pah!

Re:This isn't new!

[Pegasus]

MDA? You mean those where you can't even shift+pageup in the console, since it only has memory for 80x25 characters? Bah ... grow up man, get a Tseng ET4000. It's still the fastest card in the txt mode.

whisper soft!

[eck011219]

Wow, between this and the silent power supply yesterday, the only thing that's left is a silent sound card!

Re:whisper soft!

[HugePedlar]

What the fuck would you want a silent sou...

Oh right. Joke.

Re:whisper soft!

[KiloByte]

I got several of them. Would you want to swap one of them for one that produces sound?

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.

All fanless system is not that hard or expensive

[ylikone]

I run a completely fanless system. I used a fanless PSU, fanless CPU cooler (heat pipes), fanless graphics, fanless case. I run it with the case open. Not that expensive. Don't need water pumps because there is no water cooling involved. Just fanless parts with big heat sinks and pipes. I keep the air conditioning on in the house anyway so it is cool enough. In the winter, I just don't heat the computer room at all (the computers do it for me).

Re:Talk about a waste of money...

[fyrie]

If you want to get a really great image quality via an upscailing plug-in such as ffdshow, you most certainly need a high end gfx card. The 6600gt barely cuts it for 720p. I should know because I have one in my HTPC.

6600GT is overkill for home theater

[Junior J. Junior III]

All you need for home theater is good 2-D rendering, 16MB of memory, and a decent TV-out. Seriously. Why do you need 3D accelleration for TV? Does this card even have a TV-tuner?

fanless is overrated

[Lumpy]

in a HTPC setup fanless = not a big of a deal. hell the projector over my head makes more noise with it's fan that the 6 in the HTPC up by the screen. Oh let's forget the 2 fans in the AMP/THX decoder the 1 fan on the DVD burner/player and the fan in the replayTV.

if someone is freaked about the tiny bit of noise their fans make so they can watch TV with the volume almost at 0 then they really need to figure things out differently. Every highend home theatre does not waste time with fanlesds and low noise, they simply put the gear outside the room or in a closet with a door.

Going overboard to buy a high power video card (for an HTPC? Why? a $19.00 64 meg cheapie that has good accelerated video works best) and going nuts to make your PC silent may be your hobby, but it has no real value, espically in a Home theatre where you are supposed to be cranking the volume up past a faint whisper.

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.

Since when did they need fans?

[doublem]

When did Graphics cards start needing fans to the point where one WIHTOUT a fan is news?

The graphics card in my PC, Linux Laptop and Work Laptop are all devoid of fans. There's the case fans, the CPU fans but that's it.

Has it really been that long since I upgraded my PC? Funny how not buying new games all the time reduces my desire to upgrade my computer.

I remember attaching the CPU fan from an old Pentium to my ATI card a while back just for the fun of it, but I didn't leave it there.

What gives? What am I missing?

What in the heck are you DOING with those graphics cards that you need a fan????

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.

Re:Since when did they need fans?

[doublem]

I know, I know! The glaring hypocrisy of you spamming slashdot and you encouraging people to harass a SPAMmmer on your /. user blurb is just a subtle attempt at humor.

No, I'm just a cheap, self centered bastard.

I wasn't really incredulous about the GPU fans, I was trying to play the "Old Coot" card, and really screwed up on my attempt to convey humor on-line.

And yes, I'm aware of how old the games in question are. That was my point. I don't play many new games, which is probably the reason my GPU doesn't have a fan.

Noise

[RealityMogul]

I'll take the time to worry about my practically inaudible video card fan once I achieve the following:

1.) Install remotely activated spike strips in road for when kids go screaming through at 70mph or have the bass turned up way too loud in their car.
2.) Aquire a directional EMP generator so I can take out the neighbors stereo when she does yard work.
3.) Systematically replace every lawn in the neighborhood with artificial turf so I never have to hear a lawnmower again.
4.) Get rid of girlfriend.

Re:Does it glow in the dark?

[DrLex]

If you overclock it hard enough, I bet those heatsinks will start to glow. For a few milliseconds.

Help me in my inexperience

[YoungHack]

I totally don't game, so I have never researched video cards with that in mind. However, I have been interested in fanless video cards (with good Linux drivers). In my browsing, I looked a lot at the Jaton 3DForce Fx-5200LE (http://db.jaton.com/VGAProductDetail.aspx?P_ID=84 228L-T128MAO).

What would I be giving up? Efficient playing of video? Just 3D gaming? Just curious.

How does anyone keep all of this stuff straight?

Wrong.

[imsabbel]

It doesnt eleminate _a_ fan in a multifan enviroment, it eleminates the smallerst, highest RPM, loudest and easieast to clog up with dirt and fail fan in a multifan enviroment.

10 12cm case fans running at 7V dont come close to some of those 8000rpm 40mm fuckers

Ok, everybody jokes....

[Belial6]

Ok, everybody jokes about using a P4 as a heater. I am here to say that for the last two weekend, I did in fact use a P4 as a heater. I am remodling my home, and have removed all of the sheetrock and insulation from the Living Room/Dining Room/Kitchen. The Dining Room is where the only wall heater in the house is located. This means that running it would be useless. All of the heat would just go up through the attic, and out the vents. So, I closed the door on the bedroom, and ran my P4 3.2ghz laptap through the night. It doesn't compare to a real live heater, but it was enough to keep me comfortable.