Silent GFX or Normal GFX with replacement fan?

[calibra]

Hello,

I see that some gfx cards have silent fanless versions, which looks to me like they have great big heatsinks attached rather than noisy fans.

However I did read somewhere that its a little bit of a swizz as they are twice the price, the heatsink can take up an extra PCIe slot, they increase heat in the case, and you can buy a normal GFX card and replace the noisy stock fan with a cheap quiet version for a fraction of the price.

Has anyone got any views on this?

Thanks

 

[Tetras]

If you buy a graphics card with passive cooling you need to make sure the rest of your system is quiet, cos otherwise you have just made something else the nuisance

A graphics card with a quiet fan gets my vote, like the HIS ICEQ3 cooler.

 

[lukext]

IRT 1: I agree with Tetras. I have an HIS X1900XT, the IceQ3 one. Can hardly hear the thing, and temperature is nice and low too. This saves all the hassle of removing the reference cooler and stick on the arctic cooling one, in fact the IceQ3 cooler is made by Arctic Cooling, if you look at the other side of the fan there is usually an artic cooling sticker!

 

[Legless]

I had a passively cooled 6600GT, but it was a nightmare to keep cool in the summer months, passive cooling JUST aint as good as a good HSF... Switched to the 7800GTX when they were released, sure it makes more noise than the old passive 6600GT, but it never underclocks due to heat...