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?

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

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

[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

[Tiger4]

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

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.

*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.

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...

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.

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!

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.

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