fanless video cards

[Jon Miller]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-G...VI-I-HDTV-HDCP

It surprised me, I didn't think they were up to that now. My 4850 causes the fan to run noticeably when I play games like 3 instances of EVE or other such things.

Now I have plenty of fans, so not going completely fanless, but I am still interested by these things. It is a goal of mine to build a fanless PC at some point.

JM

[AAHZ]

I completely removed my old NVIDIA 9600 GT because the fan was so loud it literally drove me bonkers.

Im running on stock and thats just fine ATM, as all the games i play are browser-based or low-requirement

[Sir Og]

Cards like HD4850 or 9600GT run way too hot to be effectively cooled by the heatsink only. In idle it is bearable but under load the temp goes way above 70C and that is not healthy.
I have a fanless HD4670 which goes to 60C under load but I will be adding a case fan for better ventilation in the summer (the ambient tamps will be 30C+). The case fan will be low rpm 120mm fan so the noise will be better than a card with a small noisy fan.
I guess that when they start making GPUs using 32nm tech there will be cards with very good performance capable of runnig with a heatsink only, but that is still a few years away.