Is fanless ok?

Passive-cooled video cards such as that are fine, they just aren't great for overclocking. You would need at least decent tower cooling, otherwise the hot air will stay in the case and it may overheat. A PCI slot cooler would help.
 
Having adequate air flow in the case itself will help far more then any pci slot cooler. For a pci type sound card you might see some advantage with one there. For a mid to high end model card you can simply add a 3rd party(Zalman, Artic Cooling) type vpu cooler that attaches directly to the card itself.
 
Wow, thanks guys! I'm just trying to make a descision on a graphics card in the 150 or so dollar range (maybe 160). I kind of like the video cards with pci coolers built in, so they can route most of their hot air out of the case, but I'm having a little bit of trouble finding a 512mb gddr3 8600 type with that cooler for my price range. I guess I could always change the cooler out...... I want to stick with nividia because they seem to run cooler and eat less power.

How do you stick a 60mm on there? Change out the heat sink with one that can use a fan? Thanks.
Won't overclocking shorten its life span?
 
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Thanks. I kind of like yours better, but what about this one?

http://www.microbarn.com/details.aspx?rid=101509&source=pricewatch

The fact that it has two fans that would stretch the length of the card made me wonder. The kind that you showed me seem to move more air, so maybe the more convetional kind would be better. Thanks!

Edit: Never mind. It just moves the air away from the card and keeps it in the tower. I'd much rather have the normal kind that exhausts it out. Thanks!
 
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Anything mouinted on the card itself blows warm air away from the vpu chip. Case fans used for exhaust blow heated air out of the entire case. That's what serves that purpose not any cooler for the video card.

The biig flaw with pci slot coolers is they fail to move much air for the most part. The thing that seems to bring all temps down the most is increasing the intake of cooler room air since that lower board temp and anything plugged into it including cpu temps.
 
Alright, thanks! Sorry, I'm a noob at this (as you probably noticed), but what about this pci cooler?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835119066

60 cfm at 31 db. is better than some case fans. I know that hot air rises, but I'm mainly hoping for the pci slot cooler to evacuate heat from the graphics card so it doesn't fill the tower, not necessarily to lower the ambient temperature out of the rest of the case. That's where the exhaust fan comes in. The case will have at least one intake and one exhaust fan, besides the pci cooler. Thanks.
 
That's better then some with 60cfm seen there. The one tried out here was back a few years ago where some better models would seem to have come out since. But when you see a card temp of only 32C after several hours of gaming without one just great air flow seen with the Antec 900 case in use here it points out what really works the best.
 
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Running cards stock for the most part here not loving the ATI tool for sure the increased air flow seen with gaming style cases like the 900 keep the cooler room air coming in resulting in seeing all temps lower where no vpu fan is needed here. For the newer line of high end sound cards I could one used for cooling that over simply running the card stock without ocing or heavy gaming involved.

By sound card meaning the Creative Sound Blaster line as they are noted for being heavy on power demands when gaming and running multimedia. A pci type cooler would be right next to the card itself while even with a non SLI or Crossfire board there's a larger space due to the one or PCI-E 1x slots.
 
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