Originally posted by: yuppiejr
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Matt2
Ihave an X2 collecting dust. The stock cooler cools my X1900XTX much better, but sounds like a race car.
I dont have good air flow in my case and the X2 is designed very poorly for limited air flow cases.</end quote></div>
... this sounds like a poorly designed case airflow in your system rather than a fair criticism of the X2 or any aftermarket VGA cooler. The Zalmans, Thermalrights and AC units all rely on secondary airflow within the case to remove hot air they have moved away from the GPU. Only the stock blower style cooler and/or a single Thermaltake unit I found feature the self contained airflow duct that ejects GPU heat outside of the case.
I've used a Zalman VF-700 and Accellero X2 in a quiet Antec Sonata II case with slow moving fans which is a recipe for poor airflow. I had no problems with either VPU cooler outperforming the stock unit on a 1900XT in terms of both temps and noise.
What sort of limited airflow setup are you running that would make the noise of a stock 1900XTX cooler acceptable versus adding a couple of mid-low RPM case fans to your case?
I have 2 80mm front intake fans and a 120mm rear exahust fan, but I have a pretty cramped case.
The problem with the X2 for me is that the way the X2 is designed, it spits the hot air to the right directly at the motherboard where there is very little airflow.
If it spit the hot air directly down like the G80 coolers or Zalman's, it wouldnt be as much a problem.
All I know is that with the X2 I was hitting mid 80's at load, with the stock cooler I get mid 70's and the ambient temp in the case is A LOT lower because of the stock cooler's exhaust.