Fanless graphic card on MacPro?

The Mac Pro is very quiet for a full size tower workstation. The GT120 is the weakest performance level graphics.

And there aren't a lot of choices.

Nope, even laptop have heat and need to use fans. There is not going to be a totally silent system.

The GTX 285 is well desgined and I have 4 eVGA cards in my PCs. One trouble is Mac doesn't offer graphic thermal control or monitoring, unlike PCs with various utilities.

What next? you want to disable the cpu fan?

Does this means that there are no mac-compatible fanless graphic cards out there?

There are no OEM options for fanless graphics cards.
All current graphics cards have ultra high performance GPU's which require efficient cooling.

There are many aftermarket heatpipe solutions, but all require the use of a fan.
http://www.thermalright.com/newa_page/product_page/product_vgacooler.html

Space considerations aside, if a graphics card OEM fan were to prove to be obnoxious to you, a third party cooler could be the solution to reduce noise.

Beyond this, if one were willing to perform the necessary modifications, a liquid cooling system could be used to cool the GPU.

I am talking about some pretty major modifications beyond what most users consider......

Gamers and other performance buffs are numerous, so there are options for the willing and able.

Totally silent? I've built a couple and you sacrifice cooling, have to go water.

I understand how pitch and freq play a role in what someone hears. The Mac Pro case can 'humm' as well.

I'm building another PC with noise dampening washers, padding, but not sacrifice on cooling.

The ATI 3870 fans were terrible. The 8800GT has a cheap sound and pitch. A good fan can make noise but be such that it is a softer solid fan. I have seen one OEM 7300GT PCI Express but won't work, and it is really a low end consumer level.

Copper heatsinks are the only way probably.

Oh, and I bought the Mac Pro because all the other Macs were loud and horrible and for the most part it was dead silent at first. But I like the freedom of builiding a custom workstation with more options in graphics and parts than Mac Pro provides (and I really like Windows 7 better than even Snow Leopard now).

For me, sometimes the air seems to have tiny tinker bells that won't go away, or I hear the humming when I come back into the office.

If you want reviews, they all look at idle and stress levels for decibles and such.

So, the best solution is replacing the graphics cooler fan with a better third-party one..

The majority of the third party solutions provide better cooling than the OEM coolers.
This, alone, allows fans to run slower, thus reducing noise.

In the case of heatpipes, fans are separate, which allows you to choose from many near silent options.

Google can help in the research of silent fans and cooling modifications.
Admittedly, some applications will require a "pioneering" spirit. 😉

dimosthenis nikolis wrote:
Thanks guys.
So, the best solution is replacing the graphics cooler fan with a better third-party one..

I've got an accelero S1 Rev2 on my 8800GT with no fan and it's fine. The Mac Pro's throughput is exactly what this heatsink requires.

According to the specs, you could fit it to a 4870 just as easily.

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/catalog/productinfo.php?cPath=2&mID=105

Yes, I did it myself, and yes, it was easy (although somewhat fiddly).

As long as you are familiar with the insides of a computer, have the right tools and follow the instructions, you'll be fine.

FWIW I have a 2006 MacPro. After RAM and hard drives my first serious upgrade was the video card, an ATI x 1900xt. It was incredibly noisy making my quiet Mac sound like a G4. After research I changed out the cooler with an Accelero X1 which returned my computer to silence and completely eliminated a possibility of overheating failure of that card which plagued so many other people. A little hard drive head noise is all the noise heard after that upgrade.

As my 'old' Mac Pro still addresses my needs adequately I decided to bump up my video card once more to an ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB Video Card (yep it's a flashed PC version not the 512mb Mac variety). To eliminate noise and drop the heat level I added a Arctic Cooling Accelero TWIN TURBO VGA Heatpipe Video Card Cooler. It's quiet, runs much cooler and I'm ready for software developed to use OpenCL.