enclosed vs open GPU cooling?

[dan_plus_o]

Hey I am thinking about getting a HD4890 to replace my dieing 8800GTS and was wondering what would be better in terms of cooling:

Sealed enclosure designed cooling:

Or opened designed cooling:

I imagine the 2nd one would provide better cooling for the GPU due to the big heatsink and larger fan however I have read that that type of cooling design will dump a lot of the heat into the case instead of sending it out the back of the computer like the sealed cooling design.

I have an Antec 900 with the huge top fan so I'm sure any heat that is left in the case will probably get sucked out from that fan.

What is your opinion on the different cooler types and which one do you think is right for me?

Will the smaller fan also make more noise? That might be another big deciding factor.

 

[linkin]

GPU's can handle more heat than a CPU or memory, so enclosed cooling is better in my opinion because it won't heat up the rest of your case as much. Yes, smaller fans make more noise but the 2nd card has a zalman cooler, and they are very quiet.

 

[Matthew1990]

The second card has a heatsink on memory, I'd go with non reference cooler any time, even if some parts of the card are exposed.

 

[bomberboysk]

That second card has a better design for heat dissipation. The reference coolers (such as the first card) are not that effecient and are just made for ease of production and low cost. The opened vs closed doesnt matter as much as the reference cooler for the 4890 is convection only iirc(no heatpipes, may be wrong on this front though) while the second card has heatpipes as well as a larger surface area, plus it doesnt have to rely only on the cards fan to cool it(can also cool from moving air in the case). Also the reference designed tend to be pretty loud(relatively speaking)

 

[dan_plus_o]

Okay thanks for the replies.

I have heard of a lot of people removing the reference coolers to install an aftermarket zalman gpu cooler anyways so I am sure it is worth it or they wouldn't be doing it.

 

[diduknowthat]

Basically always go with the non-reference cooler. There are reasons why companies would slap their own cooler onto the card - because they're better .