Which slot fan?

[Mr Smiley]

My BFG 6800 gt is giving off some serious heat so Im thinking about getting a slot fan. These are the 2 iv picked out but Iv never heard of the companies. Here and Here. The Masscool fan has way more CFM yet the rpm is lower and the noise is the same as the other. I don't know if I should trust those specs. Has anyone used any of these fans or have experience with any of these companies? Or maybe you have another product to share? Thanks for your help.

 

[Tiamat]

I had one of those at one time. All it did was make noise. It did really little to solve a heat problem. Something that will be worth your money and hassle is the Arctic Cooling NV Silencer. This is quiet, and cools your gpu very effectively while dumping heat outside your case. You really couldnt ask for more "win" than that

 

[Dough1397]

the second oen uses a ball bearing rahter than a sleeve so....

 

[Mr Smiley]

Iv heard the NV silencer is a pain to install. How big is it? Cause I got like 1 inch until the 6800gt touches my harddrive. O wait does the NV silencer void your warranty? Should I check out the masscool? Im getting really high temps- 62C idle to 76C underload. Im pretty sure its more of a air issue because my cpu is running a little hot too. I have 1 80mm fan blowing in in the front and a 92mm blowing out in back. Dunno what else I should do exept buy a new case which I don't wanna do right now.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Barring any personal experience with these blowers, I'd say get the one with the largest CFMs -- the MassCool. However, you have to realize that fan manufacturers are sometimes unscrupulous in their specifications. Both of these supposedly generate dBA noise-levels in a low and tolerable range, if you can trust the specs. But I've heard that these blowers can be noisy, nevertheless.

Personally, I would look more carefully at the Arctic Cooling Silencer model which fits your 6800 card. I personally know at least one person who ordered the "proper" model of the Silencer, only to find that it still didn't fit his card. I was more lucky in finding a Silencer to cool an nVidia Ti4600 AGP. It "just" fit perfectly.

One reason I've never chosen the blowers is the loss of a PCI slot, but either the Silencer or a Zalman heatpipe cooler will leave you bereft of a slot, anyway.

I would take a closer look at Zalman ZM80D or similar models which fit your AGP card, and consider using the OP-1 option fan, which, like children, can only be seen and not heard even at 2,900 rpm. ThermalTake also has a new model called the "Schooner", but it doesn't offer a fan option in its passive cooling design, and assumes airflow outside your case is sufficient to remove heat from the external fins.

Great things have been said in recent days here at AnandTech forums about the "Schooner". Personally, I can say that the Zalman heatpipe coolers have cooled down my AGP cards from around 120F to the mid-90's range -- with the help of the OP-1.

 

[Spike]

Stay away from the slot fans. I used one and it was a waste of the $8 I spent on it. All it did was make more noise and not help cooling at all. Look at an aftermarket cooler for that GPU and yes, they will ALL void your warrenty. Other wise I would just open up one of your pci slots and get a larger or stronger fan in your case to move air across your card and out that open slot.

-spike