Because my MSI 6870 Hawk was lacking just a tad of power I decided to upgrade. After a lot of googling and reading up I decided between the MSI 6970 Lighting in the KFA2 580GTX Anarchy. I opted for the latter based on the non-availability of the lightning, the better Nvidia drivers and better benchmarks for the 580.



First I bought a news case: the Fractal 3000 which is a steal at 60$, eventhough you have to change the fans (to Noctua's in my case (pun intended)). It has loads of grids to dissapate the heat. You'll meed it.

When setting up the Anarchy I was shocked at the noise. But the fan was at 50% so I quickly dropped it to 20%, which is possible without a bios flash with this card. A nice plus. After this I changed the case fans to lessen the noise and get better airflow: 580's are hotheads.

This allowed me to drop de fan% at idle at 10%, after -yes- a bios mod. Now my set up is silent at iddle, love it. The beast is tamed at a nice 39C at iddle. Nore fans to be added soon, so this should improve.

Under load the card is audiable. But the fan never gets over 24% and temps never over 74C. But, you have to make your casefanse work for it. So you will end up with a very powerfull set up with this card, and under full load all you'll hear is a slight breeze (mostling the wooshing sound of the Noctua's). Very pleasant on the ears, just like a good mid end card (compared to my MSI 6870 Hawk).

The build quality is ok, yet it didn't wow me as much as the MSI products usually do. Looks of the card are fine, but nothing spectacular, but I have a closed case anyway. Gotta hide the yucky Noctua's

All in all I am very pleased with the product. With an airy case and quiet yet powefull casefans this is about as silent as air cooled high end gaming gets.

Bonus: it OC's like a charm, running stable at the 920 mark.

Did you leave the default front/rear/top placing of case fans or did you use the side panel slot?

Good work on dissipating half a kW of heat (Depending on your CPU).

The cpu is in my sig: i7 2600k with an oc at the 4.4 mark.

I removed all fractal fans, they were noisy. Right now I run with Noctua's:
front: intake NF-S12B FLX (operated by Asus fanXpert on the mobo)
back: exhaust NF-S12B FLX (operated by Asus fanXpert on the mobo)
side: intake NF-P14 140mm @ 600 rpm

The NF-P14 140mm is too noisy but I had it as a left over from my NH-C12P SE14 CPU cooler. I had to replace it with a Thermalright ty-140, which is one of the best fans around.

That is why I ordered a another TY 140 as a side intake and a Thermalright X Silent 140mm to function as a top blowhole.

It's quite a bit of work to get that airflow right, but it beats an exhaust GPU. Dumping GPU warmth into the case is fine, as long as you go the air flowing through it rightly and gently