Aftermarket coolers still worth it?

[monkeypants]

I'm in the early stages of planning a re-arrangement of my PC and a new graphics card. My quandry is: are aftermarket air coolers, like the Prolimatech MK-26, worth it in this era of Tri-X, PCS+ and DD type coolers?

Card-wise I'm erring towards the 290. So would it be better to get a reference card and aftermarket cooler or one that comes with a beefy cooler pre-fitted?

 

[Geeman1979]

Just go with one that's already custom cooled. Saves all the messing about.

 

[tbyeah]

Well something like the Prolimatech will be massively cooler and quieter but it's your choice.

 

[kaku]

Unless you get a crazy deal on a reference model, by the time you've shelled out for the card plus something like an MK-26 PLUS fans for it, there isn't really much point.

I went for reference 670s, and sorely regretted it (and these weren't even considered 'noisy cards' at the time). It was actually what pushed me to go for a custom loop.

Reference for water cooling, Tri-X/PCS or similar for air.

 

[monkeypants]

Well something like the Prolimatech will be massively cooler and quieter but it's your choice.

Massively? I'm looking to get the coolest and quietest air cooled system I can, but the difference in cooler performance has to be reasonable or it's not worth it.

 

[LtMatt]

Just go with one that's already custom cooled. Saves all the messing about.

This, unless you really like fiddling about.

 

[wazza300]

if you can live with 80-90c temps then leave as is

 

[chaparral]

If your going to go through the hassle of stripping your GPU/s to fit an aftermarket cooler/s then it has to be a water block.....

I really don't see any point in ripping a brand new highend GPU apart just to fit a different air cooler..

 

[wazza300]

they are worth it if you have the time to fit one and cant stretch to watercooling

I have an accelero fitted to a 7970 and it gained me extra 150mhz core and 300mhz memory with much less temps barely over 60c,and silent

not all non ref coolers are great either,the one fitted to my powercolour card was awefull

 

[setter]

Big fan, (pardon the pun) of the gigabyte wf cooler here. Owned a few of theese lately. Very impressed with the low noise and temps of my current 780's. Normally for sli in a tightly spaced board like mine id be reccomending reference blower style cards.

 

[DLD]

Big fan, (pardon the pun) of the gigabyte wf cooler here. Owned a few of theese lately. Very impressed with the low noise and temps of my current 780's. Normally for sli in a tightly spaced board like mine id be reccomending reference blower style cards.

Agreed. The 770s I had in SLI a while back was great. The other thing nice about them is they are not very thick. So even better for the close slot motherboards.

I have nothing but good things to say about them.

 

[monkeypants]

Thanks for the input. I think I'm going to go down the PC PCS+ route and if I'm not happy with the noise I can always fit another cooler and fans later.

I don't want to go down the watercooling route due to the size of the system, inconvenience of draining the system and cost of a new block when changing the graphics card.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

If your going to go through the hassle of stripping your GPU/s to fit an aftermarket cooler/s then it has to be a water block.....

I really don't see any point in ripping a brand new highend GPU apart just to fit a different air cooler..

Noise... . Accelero Xtreme are just quiet in my experience, reference cards sound like an aircraft taking off, 3rd party cards are somewhere in between.

If you want the expense and hassle of WC then go for that, but even then the rads require fans unless you have an entirely passive setup (not very many I suspect)