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Any fanless video cards likely to become available to Mac Pro 2008?

Surely there are reasonable performing fanless cards on the market. For what I do (HD home video, PS CS3, Aperture), I don't need some crazy fast card. The 7300GT probably would have been fine for me. And with miniaturization leading to greater power efficiency and lower heat, why shouldn't we be seeing something coming down that will be reasonable in performance and FANLESS! Like I said, I am not a gamer.
 
The 3850 was rumored to have been pulled at the last minute from the MP2008 lineup, was it not?

I could see Jobs happily supporting this fanless card. He too is a quiet-freak.
 
netdog said:
Surely there are reasonable performing fanless cards on the market. For what I do (HD home video, PS CS3, Aperture), I don't need some crazy fast card. The 7300GT probably would have been fine for me. And with miniaturization leading to greater power efficiency and lower heat, why shouldn't we be seeing something coming down that will be reasonable in performance and FANLESS! Like I said, I am not a gamer.
Click to expand...

I have the X1900, surely a noisier card than the 2600. The only time I ever hear it is during startup and whenever I play the occasional game (which is rare these days), and then only after an hour or so. During the normal course of events, it's silent.

There are always fanless aftermarket coolers for your card if the noise continues to be a distraction.
 
tdar said:
Not always... See here:

http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/products/products_overview.php?gpid=200&grp=3

Note the heatpipe 3850 card....
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Too bad that heatpipes to the back of the card would prevent its use in slot 1 in a Mac Pro even if it were compatible.

Heatpipes only move heat around a heat sink, airflow is still needed for cooling to work effectively.

3850/3870 drivers exist in OSX 10.5 but at no point was 38x0 likely to have been being readied. Development of the new MP was done with X1900 cards, 2600 and 8800 were last minute adds as 7300, X1900 are EOL.
 
Any website that sells PC parts like motherboards/CPU/heatsinks/etc will have a ton of silent GPU cooling solutions. They arent very hard to install, you just take off the stock heatsink then screw on the new one.
 
netdog said:
This looks great and fits the 8800. Anybody know if it will fit okay in the MP? Any drawbacks to going this route? A zero-noise solution sounds great to me if it will work harmoniously with my MP.
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It's been discussed numerous times here on the MR forums, as well as the Apple Mac Pro boards . Do a search for 'Accelero'.


For a picture of one installed:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/319267/

If you haven't gotten your Mac Pro yet, I'd wait to see what it sounds like first.
If you don't game, you probably won't need an aftermarket cooler.
 
i agree, if you don't already have it yet, see if you find it noisy.. i myself am a complete noise freak, and i find the 2600XT pretty darn quiet. But yeah nothing stopping modding whatever card you have with a silencer.

overclockers.co.uk are a good site i find.
 
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