BallistaMan

russianhaxor

Honestly, the best cooling solutions tend to be those that spit air back into your case. If you want a solid solution that keeps hot air out, you'd be best off with water cooling....

Any idea why this is? Just a more open design that gets rid of heat faster than any buildup raises it?

For the record I very much prefer the EE version. Gotta say it's one of the best looking cards that's come out in a long while (since the 8 series really), and I'd deal with 5*C more for a card that looked excellent through a side panel any day. Plus if I wanted silence I wouldn't cram SLI air cooled cards into a cheap case like mine. :P

The majority of aftermarket cooler manufacturers(all of them?) pretty much design their setups to give the best thermal disappation possible and that means pushing the heat out in every possibly direction rather than pulling cool air from one said and than pushing hot air down the other because if your VRMs are hot then you'll already have somewhat warm air going over the GPU and then the warm air from the GPU can also affect the memory chips... so it gets warmer and warmer and usually in order to keep everything cool those closed solutions usually require more airflow so there is less chance of this happening and that usually means a louder cooler like AMD's stock solutions.

boredgunner

dccmadams

I believe the fan noise is the number 1 complaint, and I am sure evga doesnt like the bad press on the subject, as the ref 1gb card is in the works to fix the problem. 

I agree but can it really be that loud?  The GF100 cards have smaller fans so they have to spin much faster than that of the GTX 460, so they'll be much louder.  I have to put my GTX 480 fan speed to around 70% before I can hear it over my 12 case fans.   In theory the GTX 460 EE should be quieter than any last gen GT200 card.  Fan size is the same and the heat sinks are similar, but the TDP of the GTX 460 is much less meaning less heat, so the fan won't have to work at such high speeds.

Its true the 460 EE fan is larger than GF100's, but from HWC's review it sounds like EVGA spec'd a cheaper fan with cheaper bearings resulting in a lot of bearing noise.  We know that fan size and RPM doesn't tell the full picture as its generally agreed the fans used on Cypress, despite being similar in size to Fermi's fan, produce a much different sound profile with a higher pitched whine at higher speeds.  At first glance I was expecting a similar fan to GT200's on the 460 EE, as I think everyone would agree GT200's fan was amazing in terms of how much air it pushed balanced with noise levels.  Unfortunately it seems its a different fan used, if someone who actually has an EE and is willing to check the label that'd help confirm/deny whether or not the fan is different.
 
As for the whole reference vs. blower design debate, I personally find the blower to be preferable with cards that dissipate more heat, especially if you run in SLI as that heat can quickly change your ambient temps and result in hotter case temps that adversely impact not only GPU OCs, but also CPU OCs.  Also, if your board doesn't allow for at least 1 slot spacing between cards in SLI, there's a good risk that top card gets choked out and past designs have shown that while the open-faced designs are often superior in single-GPU configs, they quickly fail or overheat when configured in CF or SLI.  With GF104 however the situation may be a bit different since these GPUs run so cool to begin with, so the additional heat dumped into the case may not be as detrimental as with designs that dissipate more heat like GT200 and GF100. 

I wonder are there any quieter replacement fans we can get/buy for the EE models?

This is just a side note but I was intending on doing a cooler mod which may still happen in the future but I just switched my 460 sli setup into a Coolermaster HAF X and installed a Silent Typhoon Fan into the gpu fan housing and wow what a temp drop . Before running one card on heaven i was getting up to 73 degrees on extreme settings... with the new setup in sli peak was 67 with a delta of 1 degree between cards and the fans never turned up past 40% setting.... So what I am saying is that these cards really respond well to over the card cooling setups. A simple mod to setup a fan blowing across the card long ways can drop 6 degrees not to mention usually sli is warmer than a single card setup!!!

I have a Zalman GT1000 case & have pre-ordered a 1gb GTX460 EE(EVGA).
I feel sure that I will have no problems arising from heat because my case is very cool.
It makes perfect sense,even with a good airflow case,to use a rear exhaust GPU,simply because the warm/hot air by-passes the interior,therefore keeping the case inside even cooler.

Anyone with a case that is not so efficient through design,in removing this air, must also benefit in using a rear exhaust fan.

In contrast,the overhead head fan type, is merely shifting this warm/hot air away from the GPU elsewhere & depends entirely on the rear case fan to remove it.
If the case is not airflow efficient,coupled with these latest GPU cards that generate more heat,then commonsense says that a rear exhaust fan is the logical choice.

matrices

boredgunner

I'm curious as to why you would prefer a cooler that exhausts some heat into your case?  The standard heat sink is also smaller and has less heat pipes.  It might cool the card a tiny bit better because the fan blows air directly onto the fins, but you can do this with a simple mod with the EE GTX 460.  All you need is cable ties and a decent 80mm or larger fan.

Because the current EVGA model is loud and crappy while the reference model isn't?

Who gives a **** if it dumps heat into your case - the thing only goes up to 65C or so to begin with. Anyone with decent airflow will have no issue with heat being dumped into the case.

People don't think through their dogmas. The whole idea of a GPU setup that  exhausts heat out of the case is to make sure that people who are dumb, and who don't have multiple 120mm case fans, don't destroy their video cards. It is a solution for the lowest common denominator.

For enthusiasts, who already have good case airflow for a reason, this exhaust solution makes a waste of their setup.

The squirrel cage (exhaust) fan by definition has to be noisier to push the air out than two fans that could just cool the heatsink by sitting on top of it.

A bit late here aren't we?  I figured you all were exaggerating about the noise but it actually doesn't seem that way.  

Did you skip over the part about the reference cards having a smaller heat sink?  If you were to get the EE version, you can remove the fan shroud and secure a fan directly onto the fins of the heat sink using cable ties.  Of course not many are willing to do this, but this will lower your temperatures considerably and you wouldn't have to use the stock fan.  The EE version provides a larger heat sink which you can take advantage of.  Of course this would defeat the purpose of EE, but noise seems to be the main concern here.  

matrices

People don't buy a product just to spend more money to ghetto-rig it so that it stays as quiet as an equivalent product. It's not that hard to understand.

Oh I understand, I'm just providing a solution for the EE.  The ghetto rig also would lower temperatures but this doesn't seem to be a problem for the GTX 460.  You selected an old post to argue, I didn't think the noise could be that bad since the "EE" design has been used on most NVIDIA cards, and since the GTX 460 has a larger fan and lower thermal design power I didn't think it would be that loud.  

Maybe the OP also wants reference cooler because of their proven overclockability, whilst with the EE editions it's unknown how far they go.

I'll buy a 460 when/if they release the 1GB with the reference cooler. My setup is near silent (enough to hear the slight hum of my cathodes) and I'm not putting a leaf blower in it.

Another reason to want the reference version is because EK is making waterblocks to fit the ref PCB.. I was under the impression that the EE used a different layout than the standard version.

tornel

Does anyone know of an aftermarket cooler that will fit the EE version? I'd rather not just strap a fan on there lol.

 
lol, agreed! I may live on the East side, But I'm not an East Sider

@ BoredGunner;

I have an EE gtx 460 and i am interested in this ghetto set-up (simply because i don't like having a constant leafblower going) the problem is that, i'm not that savvy with computers, i can be if i'm told properly, so is it possible for you to elaborate on the ziptie procedure? What exactly would i need to succeed at it? fan type, thermal paste etc?

I would really appreciate it.

Boredgunner; Thanks for that, really appreciated, might try it out

boredgunner

All you would have to do is disassemble the card (leave the heat sink on though), use an 80mm or 92mm fan and cable ties to secure it to the heat sink.  I can't tell you how to secure the fan exactly since that is improvised.  No need to redo the thermal paste unless you want to though - as you don't have to remove the heat sink to do this mod.

Guys... DO NOT try to pry the shroud off.  You must remove the entire heatsink/fan (HSF) assembly as one piece to be able to separate the shroud from the heatsink itself.  There are eight black screws on the bottom of your card that hold this assembly on.  Remove those, then lightly twist and tug until the board and HSF assembly separate.  Be careful not to separate too far as you will need to unplug the fan from the card as a final step.  Once apart, the shroud can be separated from the heatsink (4 silver screws).  The fan is also attached to the shroud with smaller silver screws, but you won't need to mess with these if you are rigging just the heatsink to a new fan.  You can re-attach the heatsink to the card by itself using all 8 of the black screws.  Be sure to keep all parts in case you need RMA.  You will need to redo the thermal paste.
 
Having just replaced the TIM yesterday on my GT 460 1GB EE SC I can confirm there is no way to remove just the shroud without removing the heatsink as well.

There just has to be a bad batch of 460 EE card fans out there because the 460 SC 1GB EE SLI rig I got to mess with while playing Metro 2033 at 1920 x 1800 (heavy on the eye candy) didn't get either hot or loud. He had some cheap noise dampening installed inside of the Cosmos S case (with a water cooled CPU) & the case under his desk & the noise from the computer (in an office cubicle setting) wasn't annoying or loud (I'll have to ask what fan profile he had set).