bfitzgerald wrote:Greg I'd suggest a nice passive GPU with no fan which is what I use myself right now. I've pulled out graphics cards that have melted fans these babies can get pretty hot, case airflow is a problem at times not enough and the fan is working overtime trying to keep it cool.
I have some vivid memories of pulling out factory fitted GPU's (Dell) at the time the were enclosing the CPU and the rear case fan was pulling the heat off the processor away. Sadly this meant very little flow of air though the case. I replaced quite a few cards in Dell's due to that design fault.
Of course you could argue the passive one are not so powerful, but you'd be surprised how far they've come even the entry ones are quite decent now and bring other benefits (such as offloading CPU cycles with flash and video formats) even a cheapo AMD 6450 512Mb is actually quite good performance wise maybe not for gamers (you'd pass off some light gaming) but still fairly respectable and many are passive heatsinks and don't get that hot or draw much power.
Thanks for the comments, Greg and Agorabasta,
Barry I'm sort of already on it, I built an entertainment PC for the livingroom last year with an AMD Quad core processor, the 925 I seem to remember. It has a low power draw of only 95W but still a reasonably quick 1066 Bus speed bunged it all in a horizontal Antec Fusion case with an Asus Xonar sound card running my Celestion floorstanders thru an Amp. Anyway the whole thing is pretty much fanless, very quiet too
I'm wondering about an i5/i7 Mac Mini for the Photography though, as the whole thing is pretty much a heatsink? I don't want a Glossy Mac screen as it can't match my Eizo for colour...
It would help me reclaim some much needed deskspace too, I keep my PC ontop after working with them I'd not have one near the floor again, not even on a stand. (Fag smoke/nicotine/dust bunnies/Hair/cat pee, yes cat pee!) Opened up too many like that and what it does to the inside is not pretty...
Lighter note and back to Photography:
It's forecast misty with brilliant sunshine later for the Lakes, I'M GOING OOT! YAY!