• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Semi Fanless or semi passive gaming card

Domi

Domi

Domi

Associate
Joined
6 Sep 2008
Posts
790
It really seems to be that a trick is being missed here.

I am actively looking (without much success) for the best graphics card I can get that is "silent" at idle.

This is for a media centre PC that I keep tucked behind the TV in a full tower case that I keep completely passively cooled.

I really want to be able to ramp up the gaming capabilities at 1080 and at this point anybody who has gone 100% passive will tell you the problems start.

The thing is for gaming I do not really need 100% passive and so with a semi fanless PSU and case fans off with a fan contoller the machine can be 100% passive when watching films BUT have decent air flow when gaming except...

The Graphics cards do not exist , Lucid Virtu does not really work properly in this way (would be lovely to have IGP for movies with discrete card disabled) and even at idle almost no (decent)cards are below 30db and frankly that is still way to noisy in a quiet living room listening to music.

So why can we not have a whopping great cooler capable of passively cooling at idle and with a fan that only kicks in as the temps go up.

If the above can be done please point me in the right diection :)
 
Get a kick ass cooler that never gets loud.
Click to expand...

My point is one does not exist that I know of even 25 db is too loud and if you can find one that can do less than 20db you are doing better than me.
 
Sadly Lucid Virtu at best only disables the discrete card it does not actually turn it off.

Meaning the Fan still spins :( at idle speeds an even with an exceptional VGA cooler that generally means 20-25db minimum. (nearer 40 with most cards).

What is really poor Is the latest AMD cards (7000 series) will turn themselves off completely when not used so for example when downloading overnight and the screen is in sleep mode but Lucid Virtu does not work with this feature.

If this worked with Lucid Virtu this would be a fantastic solution except it does not.
 
yeah that was what i was thinking of actually, the amd cards supposedly pull less than 10w at idle or something. they probably don't work in tandem because they're both very young technologies. shame because they're almost made for each other.

how about a 6850 if you hadn't heard of it already? it's the best passively cooled possible at the moment, and if you want the power you can crossfire
 
yep the 6850 is my best bet at the moment though it is notable that it does not really actually work passive.

Even so at £130 the powercolor 6850 is undoubtably the best passive card that exists.

I am certain the 6850 will work for me with the use of extra fans for gaming but really many cards should be capable of running passive when for instance under 10% load and ramping the fans up via profile when needed.

Power supplies can now do this why not Graphics cards that lets be honest are not at the cheap end of PC products.
 
Yep that might just work champion :)

Should be completely possible to get the fan controller automated.

Ok Ill let you know how I get on.
 
The Accelero S1 PLUS looks an even better option as its cheap and I already have a 5850 that I can experiment with :)
 
Domi said:
The Accelero S1 PLUS looks an even better option as its cheap and I already have a 5850 that I can experiment with :)
Click to expand...

Yup, it should be pretty good, as the post I linked to has it overclocked quiet substantially without a fan and it hits 86c. Without an overclock, the temps would be nice and low.
 
ha! if it was going to end up being 5 pci slots anyway couldn't they have made the heatsink bigger and left it passive? i'm probably missing something, like cost/weight/knowledge about thermodynamics. but 2 140mm fans and an already huge heatsink seems wasteful somehow. thanks for that though, didn't know it existed
 
like i said, i doubt even if it were 5 slots it would be enough for cooling, myb at standard clocks, but not overclocked, and that card is all about overclocking.

In regards to the arctic cooler (the 7970 one), i've got one installed on a 5870 in an older rig and at 100% load, never goes above 55 degrees. (1000 on the core, 5200 on the memory).

Thats with fans on 70% and inaudible over my case fans which are 11 decibel fans (Noiseblockers).

It's the best AIR cooling solution available for any GPU in my opinion. When you factor in the fact thats in comes with everything needed (fans, quality paste, the GP1 vram glue all the vram heatsinks) at the same price as other coolers without fans and wot-not its a no-brainer.

Anyways, hope it helps and good luck to ya1 :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom