Fan or Heatsink ? Which cools a video card better ?

[vinayag]

What is the better method of cooling a video card or a processor ? Fan or a heatsink ? And why ?

Im a newbie in the world of overclocking. So do not pounce on me !!!

 

[duragezic]

Heatsink and fan. You can't just have a fan. And of course a heatsink with a fan would be best. Why? Well the heatsink draws the heat from the chip and then the fan takes that hot air from the heatsink and draws it out from the heatsink.

eagle

 

[arthurb1]

Exactly, a heatsink does good, but when a fan is forcing air over it (or in the case of an Alpha, sucking air out of it, but I have yet to see an Alpha for a video card) it does lots better. I remember the days when you could just screw a 486 fan onto your Diamond Viper V500 and overclock the daylights out of it...that was fun

 

[randomlinh]

well, if i didn't have all these other PCI cards, i could hook up an alpha to the vid card

 

[Scifione]

A heatsink+fan is always better than a bigger heatsink without a fan that takes up the same amount of space. If you can free the first PCI slot, that is great. A card cooler is great, but try to find one that does not need physical support of the motherboard. Here is just a place to start when it comes to finding the right CPU cooling device for you: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1279

I am of the OPINION that the AGP specification needs to be change to were the chips are on top where you can have better cooling and the ATX specification needs to take this into account. It is rare the you will not have space above the AGP slot, but below you have PCI slot in the way.