Silent Cooler for VGA

[madad2005]

Anyone know of any silent heatsinks that can be bought for graphics cards? I am fairly happy with the performance of my 6600, but the fan is starting to annoy me (I like quiet!). I know the cards available today (6600/6600GT) have silent heatsinks on them and rather than buy a new one, I wondered if it was possible to get one and fit it myself.

Anyone able to help? I've checked a few british websites. I'll go and have a look at newegg.com now.

Cheers in advance

[Whyzman]

Sorry, I didn't check to see if these are available on newegg, but zalman is a well-known company...

http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/code_list.asp?code=014

Fit is obviously going to be the key ingredient...

Thermaltake makes their Crystal and blue orbs that I've found to be quiet and work well. The OEM fans, in my experience leave much to be desired. My ASUS motherboard had one that actually thought it could get into the Vienna Boy's Choir...plenty high enough, but only knew one note. And, it thought it was a soloist...:rolleyes:

[madad2005]

Well, I've been searching everywhere and most of these silent ie no fan at all coolers are mainly for the PCI-E versions or non-6600GT (and usually therefore 6600) AGP cards, because of the HSI bridge chip. I may of found one, however. The Thermaltake schooner. It is absolutely massive, but only £20 and will assist me in obtaining peace and quiet! :-D

[saphalline]

Oh no, not the Schooner!! :eek:

That thing is absolutely horrible! It recently appeared in Max PC's worst hardware of the year section. You might be able to run a 6600 (non-GT) without too many problems, but the cooling performance on that thing is atrocious.

In tests all over the web, the Schooner allowed some vid cards to get so hot, they reset themselves and initiated a system restart. For most vid cards, they got hot enough to throttle-down the GPU/VPU speed. It's probably the first 3rd-party vid card cooler to actually reduce gaming performance! :eek:

I would advise against getting the Schooner. I don't know exactly what you're looking for considering that most of Zalman's silent cooler line can be used on just about any vid card, but at the very least don't buy the Schooner.

[madad2005]

That bad? Well, it seems I am buggered. I want a completely silent heat sink. The zalman silent heatsink does not work with the sparkle 6600/6600GT. I can't find any other. Maybe I'll sell my card and buy another with a heatsink on it already. Bugger!