Anybody have a good sense of the relative cooling performance (temperature, noise level) of these two main EVGA GTX 960 cooler styles? I'm talking about the longer, two-fan model seen on cards such as the 2962 2963 compared to the shorter, one-fan design seen on cards such as the 2963 2962 (edit: on second glance I got my wires crossed on the model numbers). I guess I would be stoked if EVGA had actual numbers they were willing to share with regards to noise levels, but failing that, what is known about these two? I'm trying to gauge the potential noise level of the shorter card for a decently well ventilated but restrictive ITX build where the longer cards don't physically fit.
 
The fans seem to be identical, but that's only in physical appearance. Do they run on the same PWM controller and range, resulting in the same rpm (as necessary for cooling)? As we know from the R9 Fury Nano, small cards can combine reasonable cooling with decent-to-average acoustics (louder than I'm aiming for) even up to 175W, but that requires a very dense design, a copper-plated vapor chamber, and all the stops pulled. We're dealing with 120W here, though. Some stubby cards just use a radial heatsink with the large fins and no heatpipes, like an oversized stock Intel cooler. From the pictures I know the 2962 does better than that, but how much better?
 

images not exactly to scale relatively, but close

wmmills
Heres a review that you can get those numbers from:   As far as how loud the single fan card would be I would imagine that it would be slightly quieter since its only a single fan, but not by too much.... maybe 5 dbi. They both most likely run the same pwm controllers and they both will run within the same temp ranges for when the cards are in a cool idle state. I believe they are set to kick on at 60c, but you can always change that, the overclocking and the fans speed with MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision tools.

Yeah, I'd seen the TPU review. Clearly, the heatsink on the shorter card is smaller. Generally for equivalent levels of cooling when given the same thermal load, hitting the same temperature, the larger heatsink with two fans will be able to operate the fans at lower speeds and result in a lower noise level. All else equal, obviously at equivalent fan speeds having two fans would be louder than one. If uncorrelated and not interacting with each other (a simplifying assumption to be sure, with two fans blowing into the same structure in such proximity), two noise sources should combine for a reading of 3 dB more than the single. But for real-world usage we're interested in a comparison with temperature constant, not fan rpm, so that's besides the point.

Bumping for the first and last time here, just in case somebody else might know something.
 
Blower fans were never mentioned, to be clear. By "single" that means the model as depicted in the first post. Definitely not a blower.

Major props, thanks for that. I was honestly not really expecting that much of an answer, just going fishing.

Okay, got the card in today (shipped unexpectedly quickly), a 2962. And apparently these do idle with the fan off.
 
I haven't tested it all that much yet, but it went through 3DMark and Unigine just fine, and without the fan ever going above 1000 rpm. That was a pleasant surprise. I may tweak the fan curve later and power settings, throttling it down intentionally if necessary to keep fan speeds lower for prolonged CPU+GPU stress, but that may not even be necessary. Fingers crossed.