How much of a problem in the Silverstone FT02 is the 90 degree vertical orientation of the MB, and graphics card, on aftermarket coolers working effectively? I've done research and there seems to be mixed reports as to whether the better aftermarket coolers work well in a vertical orientation due to their heat pipe design. Does anyone have any insight with this? Is there a quiet enough (at idle) high performance AMD reference card that works well in the FT02? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Installing a top down cooler with the heatpipes coming out below the CPU socket or the GPU, the performance might suffer a bit. I'd have to look up the reviews, but the difference was only ~3 deg centigrade.
In a CPU tower cooler the heatpipes are vertical to the floor regardless of the mainboard orientation, same as in a regular tower. There should be no performance penalty at all.
Older heatpipe coolers, older than 5 years, where a bit more sensitive.

What's a high performance card to you and what idle state do you mean?
The Radeon 7950 offers the same performance as a Geforce 580 GTX and there are several Radeon 7950 cards with aftermarket coolers. The quietest coolers are Asus Direct CU II, Gigabyte Windforce and MSI Twin Frozr, probably in that order.
If you use an Intel Z68 or H67 (or the upcoming Z77 or H77) chipset you can use Lucid Virtu. You connect your monitor to the mainboard and the graphic card is used for games only, everything elss is powered through the CPU's graphic. With Virtu an AMD 7950 or 7970 card can go into low idle mode consuming about 3W and power it's fan of completely.
I don't know which of these cards support low idle mode through their bios.

Unfortunately, after spending many hours I've found all sort of contradictory reports about the impact of heatpipes orientation, even in the spcr forums .

For example, for the same Accelero Xtreme Plus + FT02/Raven RV02 combination I found reports that say the difference is almost negligible, while others say they get 20ºC more (!) with a rotated motherboard: in both cases they said they ran real tests, rather than make some theoretical guess. MikeC himself said the effect would be minimal in this thread, http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=60806, whereas at http://en.expreview.com/2010/11/15/90%C2%B0-rotationhow-to-install-heatpipe-cooler/11843.html/5 they took measurements implying that using the Accelero Xtreme Plus would be a disaster.

The fact that there is no reliable info on this is holding me back from buying an FT02/Raven 02/Raven 03. I have a dead silent setup with crossfired 5850+Accelero Xtreme Plus, and don't want to find out that the Accelero Xtremes are a disaster in those cases after I've made the investment. All other components in my system are dead silent, and even the HDD is enclosed in a case with coolpacks which you can't hear: using the old GPU coolers would destroy the setup.

Maybe it would make a nice article to find out what's going on, and what to take into account to choose a GPU cooler in a case with a rotated motherboard (hint for the spcr guys ).

Regards

Thanks for the replies. Yes I agree Pet there are mixed reports on this issue.

It's been a while since my last build and I don't have a sense of the noise levels at idle of a relatively decent performance reference card (maybe not the best, but decent). The covering on many reference cards covers the cooler so it is hard to tell what the cooler design is, and if it will work okay vertically in an FT02. My concern is that if I want to do quieting on the video card, there are not many aftermarket coolers that seem to have been tested in the vertical orientation. The FT02 case is my first choice though from what I've seen online, but this one snag is making me wonder if I should look for another case where this would be a non-issue.

boost, what AMD card would you, or anyone else, recommend? Cost is less of an issue than finding the right card that balances performance (as I do want to play the latest games), but is comparatively quiet - and quiet at idle.

If you can afford it the Asus 7970 Dirct CU II.
The Direct CU cooler has been the best for other power hungry cards like the GTX570/580. The idle noise level is probably not much better than the stock 7970 for two reasons. The 7970 is quiet in idle and the minimum fan speed in the bios is a little high. With fanspeed or a bios flash it should be even better.
The Gigabyte Windforce 3 is also pretty good. This Xbitlabs review compares GTX570 cards (which use about the same mount of power) with these coolers. The noise level of the Asus is slightly higher and temps are slightly lower in idle, under load the Asus pulls ahead a little. The coolers of the GTX570 cards are about equally good, the Asus just a little bit better, the detail is in the bios' fan control. Which is different for the GTX570 and Radeon 79X0.
The 7950 offer ~85% of the power for ~80% of the price. The price/performance ration is a little better, but the difference is not that big.