Graphic Cards Graphics cards: Active vs. passive cooling

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What's better active cooling (fan) or passive cooling (heatsink)? Depends on your goals.

Passive cooling:
No fan to take power
No fan to get dusty
No fan that can fail and destroy the card
Quiet

Granted, for the latest and most expensive graphics cards, they require a fan. But many quite capable cards are available in both fan and heatsink versions.

Also, how noisy are GPU fans, for those that have them?
 
Passive cooling is a joke.

Atleast for most cards.

Cars like 6200TC, 7300GS, can do without Active cooling as they have no power.

But to run a Card like even an 7600GS, cool, you need Active cooling.

Most people who have bought a Passive cooling card, have ended up putting a fan on the heatsink anyways..
 
yeah passive cooling can work only on low end cards like 6200tc and 7100GS types which dont heat up as such
 
If you are looking for silent cooling then liquid cooling is the best solution for high end cards... Its expensive & still in infancy but I think in near future with the increase in transistor count & heat dissipated by these monsters we would be needing liquid cooling since air cooling would not suffice... :ohyeah: :ohyeah: :ohyeah:
 
Well , actually i'd always suggest a passive cooler from now onwards :D .. simply because u can always add in fans on the passive cooler , and the better design of the cooler itself will actually be working much better with a fan than its own active cooled counterpart ..

currently i'm using a passive cooler 7950GT running at 600/1600 .. idle temps are around 35c-45c ... and load around 55c ... damm good from what i can say :D ..
 
deathvirus said:
Well , actually i'd always suggest a passive cooler from now onwards .. simply because u can always add in fans on the passive cooler , and the better design of the cooler itself will actually be working much better with a fan than its own active cooled counterpart ..
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hehe..good point..;) I did the similar thing...i have a passive cooled XFX 7600 gs.. the heat sink is actually quiet well made for the lack of the fan..but still it wasnt upto the mark in cooling the core...i checked an online review of the same card and it said tht the card wud reach 100C on load..:O

so the first thing i did after buying the card was fit a cabinet 80mm fan on the heat sink with the help of plastic wedge pins (commonly used to secure motherboard to the cabinet back plate..snaps into the mobo screw holes)

And it did the trick!! Now my 7600 gs idles at 46C and rarely goes above 52C on load.. :)
 
deathvirus said:
Well , actually i'd always suggest a passive cooler from now onwards .. simply because u can always add in fans on the passive cooler , and the better design of the cooler itself will actually be working much better with a fan than its own active cooled counterpart ..
Click to expand...
hehe..good point..;) I did the similar thing...i have a passive cooled XFX 7600 gs.. the heat sink is actually quiet well made for the lack of the fan..but still it wasnt upto the mark in cooling the core...i checked an online review of the same card and it said tht the card wud reach 100C on load..:O

so the first thing i did after buying the card was fit a cabinet 80mm fan on the heat sink with the help of plastic wedge pins (commonly used to secure motherboard to the cabinet back plate..snaps into the mobo screw holes)
And it did the trick!! Now my 7600 gs idles at 46C and rarely goes above 52C on load.. :)
 
^^^ so to fit in those pins....did u have to drill some holes in the heat sink??

wat r ur temps like now
 
^^Yeah..no need to drill or do something even remotely close to it..mind u, doing so will void any and all warranty..;) You can easily press the wedge pins into place in between the heatsink fins.. and then just plug the fan on top of the pins..just see to it tht the pins are properly placed on all 4 sides to go into the fan screw holes.. my heatsinks design didnt permit me to fit pins on all four sides.. but it is pretty much fixed even with three pins..and doesnt move a bit..

current temps are 46C idle and 52C on load.. n m pretty satisfied with the temps now.. :)
 
thebigbadidea said:
What!?? I want to see a pic of that... My 7600s run at 65/55 load and 50/40 idle clocked at 622/1500.
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deepak said:
@deathvirus....howd u put a fan on that???some pics...some tuts
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I didn't put a fan right on the hs .. just an Antec VCool .. or anything similar will do the trick .. plus i also have a 80 mm fan blowing in air directly on the hs from the side panel :D



And about the temps :D



BTW @thebigbadidea : ur 7600 runs at 650/1500 ?? U've got the ddr3 one ??
 
2x geforce 7600gt @ 630/1500.

Did some benchmarking recently and found that they run better at 622/1470. Thinking about a new HS&F for both and a reflash of the bios to get better voltage to them (look at my name). I wonder if I can outdo your 7950's clock speeds...

I currently get around 2500 for HDR/SM3 and 2600 for SM2 on 3dmark06.

I did have them at 650/1540 but the PNY card got to 80c very quickly on the real time HDR test, and I got some serious artifacting. PNY Verto 7600GT & EVGA 7600GT KO, I'm using NGO Nvidia optimised drivers because the cards come from two manufacturers and nvidia doesn't have good driver support anymore.

PNY 7600GT doesn't come with decent cooling or enough thermal paste. It ran at around 63c idle stock before I applied more thermal paste.

The temps that I gave (65/55, 50/40) are my PNY card/EVGA card.
 
Did some benchmarking recently and found that they run better at 622/1470. Thinking about a new HS&F for both and a reflash of the bios to get better voltage to them (look at my name). I wonder if I can outdo your 7950's clock speeds...

I currently get around 2500 for HDR/SM3 and 2600 for SM2 on 3dmark06.
Click to expand...

Did u direct this to me ?? If so then ok .. lets set ur milestones right :

(i) Currently Using : 600/1600

(ii) Auto Detected : 638/1780

(iii) Max. Tested : 640/1805

But i don't want to burn my card now do i :P ..
 
@deathvirus: blow the air at the fins of the heatsink not the base. Blowing at the fins would be way more effective than the base.
 
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