Blower-style cards

[cisto1999]

Are the blower-cooler style cards from other brands as good as Nvidia's Founders Edition or rather - are they all the same under the hood?

I am referring to the 10er series of the Nvidia GPUs.

 

To specify: i am looking at the msi aero - cooling performance as good as FE? (noise - cooling performance)?

[Skiiwee29]

No. Blower style coolers are generally the worst of them all. They only fit a very small, niche market. Honestly the only reason you should get one is if you plan to water cool it as its generally based on the reference/founders design PCB and are usually cheaper than others, or if you have a mITX or a very small form factor case that requires a blower style cooler to effectively exhaust the heat. 

[Nena Trinity]

Good to exhaust heat from your system if you got poor air-flow! (yes probable same as FE)

[cisto1999]

I have to clarify - i want to install 3 of the cards in one case - so blower-style will be the best in this scenario.

[Levent]

Just now, cisto1999 said:

I have to clarify - i want to install 3 of the cards in one case - so blower-style will be the best in this scenario.

nope, they still lack cooling power, you are almost always better off with a custom cooler with regular fans.

[cisto1999]

6 minutes ago, Levent said:

nope, they still lack cooling power, you are almost always better off with a custom cooler with regular fans.

But with 3 GPUs - won't the case heat up to a point where blower-cooler cards make more sense also in cooling performance?

I have the corsair 540 air with 3x120mm fans at the front - but still i guess that i would be better off with blower-cooled cards. Am i totally wrong with this opinion?

[danrey84]

Blower style cards are great for venting air out but in relation to dispelling heat they are probably seen as the worst cards compared to the AIB cards. As the person said a couple of posts back they fit a niche market.

[cisto1999]

3 hours ago, danrey84 said:

Blower style cards are great for venting air out but in relation to dispelling heat they are probably seen as the worst cards compared to the AIB cards. As the person said a couple of posts back they fit a niche market.

Exactly ... but i guess 3 GPUs in one system is such a niche? It is simple hard to imagine for me that it would be better to dissipate the heat of roughly 650 watts inside the case...

But i don't want to sound like somebody who knows this better - because if so, i wouldn't have started the thread... so maybe you are right. I am just curious why most of the air-cooled multi GPU high end systems are build with reference-cards?

[danrey84]

I completely see your point of view. However there are a lot of people who don't use blower style. I think its all the matter of personal preference. Yes reference cards do look kind of cool but so do strix cards or FTW cards.

[Tytan64]

I have a GTX 980 Ti reference and a GTX 1080 Founders Edition. The 980 Ti can get pretty loud though but the 1080 FE is very quiet to be honest!

[MEC-777]

Gonna weigh in here and say that if I were to run 3 cards in one system, I would probably go for blower-style cards for the exact reason @cisto1999 pointed out. It's better to get all that hot air straight out of the case rather than have it blowing inside. 

 

Blower cards of the latest gen GPU's, especially the 10XX series are better than previous gens because the GPUs are much more energy efficient. They don't need to work as hard and thus, the blower coolers are sufficient. They are not as bad as some of you are making them out to be. 

 

@cisto1999 make sure you have good air flow in your case (good intake fans at the front blowing fresh air directly to the blower intakes) and you'll be fine. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Not only good airflow, but good ventilation as well. If you strap an axial fan cooler in a box, that heat's just going to linger around in there unless there's good ventilation. Most cases aren't designed with this in mind, making the case seem more like an air duct.

 

I can stick an axial fan cooled video card in my tiny case and not worry because there's plenty of ventilation for hot air to get out.

[cisto1999]

Thank you all for your comments.

[cisto1999]

Sorry... didn't want to turn my answer into "best answer" - was a mistake :-(

[DXMember]

Blower style cooler is the most inefficient design to cool a graphics card, the air gets hot before it even reaches GPU that it's supposed to cool down

[Mick Naughty]

Blower are the best in every situation. Especially in sli. Unless you like baking your cards which most people do. 3 open air coolers in a case would be the worst setup you could do.