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i ahve a HD 5850 that needs a new cooler - the fan is duff

just seen this:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Arctic-Accelero-S1-PLUS-Passive-VGA-Cooler-DCACO-V470001-BL-NEW-/281016276063?pt=US_Video_Card_GPU_Cooling&hash=item416de0145f

is it worth investing in?

my case is going to be an open air case so obviusly plenty of airflow... - would save me a few w in fan and a lot of noise ;)

Those are OK if you're playing an hour of Half-Life 2 or something.  They saturate very quickly if you're doing heavy GPU stuff like mining. 

I used to run a pair of Gigabyte passive cooled 7600GT - they were fine playing games, but run something like 3DMark in a loop, or Furmark or the likes and they soon overheated and shut down. 

thanks - i'll scratch that idea then ;)

you can use passive coolers if and only if your case provides enough airflow on it's own(one or two big fans as opposed to lots of little ones is the idea there)

i have two large 220mm fans but i dont think the CFM is very high.

an active cooler is far safer and easier unless you're designing the case yourself and ducting a high volume through where the cards are

thats what i thought ;)

although i did think about strapping a big fan to it but then that defeats the purpose :D

not in this case. but with a properly designed cooler and ducting it could be useful in a high density scenario compred to traditional coolers.

If you're going to be buying a bunch of heatsinks/fans for a high density setup, why not just watercool?

the idea was that its not high density - the case is open air and i was hoping that the passive coolers would help reduce the noise levels as its going to be sat on my desk in my home office