Reference Cooler Vs After Market Cooler

[Monti]

what is the best cooler because the 650 ti boost is very common in the reference cooler design. Will the graphics card preform better with a after market cooler? My case doesn't have a lot of air flow by the way. Any help is helpful, bye.

[extremescouter]

The GPU will perform better with an aftermarket cooler, because it will keep your card cooler, which would allow for a larger over clock. So yes, theoretically an aftermarket cooler design will perform better. 

[Monti]

OK just wanted to know because they are about the same price

[YellowDragon]

Cards with aftermarket coolers generally perform better as they usually come out of the box with an overclock, failing that they offer superior acoustics and better cooling in single card configurations. However once you get into crossfire and SLI Reference designs are preferred since custom cards eject inside the case and you would need some seriously powerful fans to exhaust the heat properly, where as with the reference since they eject out the back there is no need for extremely over the top case cooling, in short the reference designs are made to be sandwiched together, where as the aftermarket ones are not.

[mgsstar]

I would get a aftermarket cooler card because these coolers generally cool better and quieter than the reference one, which gives you the ability to achieve better overclocks than the reference cooler.