Originally Posted By: ClubNeon
For a while I was interested in large, fin-based passive cooling systems. But found none of them could cool a really high-end machine. (See this one's recommendation of the NVIDIA 9500 card, a mid-line model.) So you have to compromise the system design just for the sake of cooling, and I'm left still wanting a monster rig.

So I figured why compromise slightly if I'm going to end up with two machines, make one the monster, and the other draw so little power that it doesn't even need external fins to cool itself.


Precisely my experience as well. What the "silent" or "fanless" products don't tell you is that you're either limited to certain hardware that doesn't run that hot or you must accept running your hardware at extremely high temps, which is never a good thing when it comes to computers and/or electronics.