SPCR

I actually don't see much use for passive cooled GPU's anymore, to be honest. A few years ago I had a HD4850 (Gigabyte). The card itself was silent, but without decent airflow the card got fried in no time. I had to buy extra casefans, modify the case and ended up with a louder system than I had before. I tried an Arctic Accelero as well (on a HD5750), which worked fine but only after installing an extra 120mm fan with zipties.

Bottomline: some cards nowadays are straight from the box perfectly silent. I recently got myself a R9 270 from MSI, it's completely inaubible! Even better, using MSI's Afterburner I was able to set a fan curve forcing the fans to stay put until the card reaches 50°C. No more passive cards for me, they're more expensive and usually require more attention and moneyspending...

Look at this MSI GTX 980 review, for example.

Potenza wrote:I actually don't see much use for passive cooled GPU's anymore, to be honest. A few years ago I had a HD4850 (Gigabyte). The card itself was silent, but without decent airflow the card got fried in no time. I had to buy extra casefans, modify the case and ended up with a louder system than I had before. I tried an Arctic Accelero as well (on a HD5750), which worked fine but only after installing an extra 120mm fan with zipties.

Bottomline: some cards nowadays are straight from the box perfectly silent. I recently got myself a R9 270 from MSI, it's completely inaubible! Even better, using MSI's Afterburner I was able to set a fan curve forcing the fans to stay put until the card reaches 50°C. No more passive cards for me, they're more expensive and usually require more attention and moneyspending...

Look at this MSI GTX 980 review, for example.

Thank the bloody hell there seems to be more attention paid to the idle states of the cards. So it's taken the industry only 6-7 years sice AMD started with powerplay.