I recently got a 7600gs with passive cooling (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814125028). It was runnning pretty hot (60c idle / 85-99c after an hour of gaming). The slowdown threshold on nvidia's monitor tool is 125c, and the card ran fine (no artifacting etc) but I figured I would try to lower temps a bit.
My case doesn't have a lot of airflow (just a psu fan and one outtake case fan). I decided to try a slot fan cooler, despite mixed reviews of their effectiveness. The Antec VCool advertises temp drop of 5-15c (http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=75060).
To my surprise, after putting this in, my gpu temps dropped to 38c idle and about 50-60c load. My sense is that it's more effective in my case (versus some of the reviews) because I have passive cooling, so there was no airflow across the card before. This cooler supposedly pulls air in from outside the case and blows it across the heatsink.
When I unplug the fan, temps rise, but are still a bit lower (maybe 10c) than before. Perhaps because of the venting holes on the back of the vcool? Also, the recent cold weather has probably caused an ambient temp drop that might account for some of the drop.
Just wanted to share this. Has anyone had similar experiences with using fans with passively cooled video cards?
My case doesn't have a lot of airflow (just a psu fan and one outtake case fan). I decided to try a slot fan cooler, despite mixed reviews of their effectiveness. The Antec VCool advertises temp drop of 5-15c (http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=75060).
To my surprise, after putting this in, my gpu temps dropped to 38c idle and about 50-60c load. My sense is that it's more effective in my case (versus some of the reviews) because I have passive cooling, so there was no airflow across the card before. This cooler supposedly pulls air in from outside the case and blows it across the heatsink.
When I unplug the fan, temps rise, but are still a bit lower (maybe 10c) than before. Perhaps because of the venting holes on the back of the vcool? Also, the recent cold weather has probably caused an ambient temp drop that might account for some of the drop.
Just wanted to share this. Has anyone had similar experiences with using fans with passively cooled video cards?
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