i would prefere a passive HS

since it is a oldish gpu i ask for you help to find where i can buy a good silent heat sink for
896-P3-1255-AR - eVGA GTX 260 CORE 216 55NM 576MHZ 896MB 1.998GHZ GDDR3 PCI-E 2XDVI-I HDTV OUT

thx
ps i have space and power

The GTX260 has a TDP of 182W. This is optimistic for a passive heatsink. The Arctic Accelero S1 Plus is probably closest. It's predecessor the S1 was factory fitted to some 8800GT's which had a TDP of 126W. Attaching a 120mm fan to the heatsink should allow it to cool 182W but obviously this is not passive.

Alternatively you could buy one of their more expensive Twin Turbo models which are rated for higher TDP and already have fans but this will accept that passive is not possible. With the S1 Plus you might be able to try passive and so long as the GPU isn't breaking 85C, you'll be fine. If it does get too warm then adding a 120mm fan to it will fix this.

Hi, I had a GTX260 that I cooled with an Akasa Freedom Force cooler.
The cooler as stock wasn't too bad, although it came with 9 tiny VRAM sinks for a card with 14 VRAM chips, not to mention all the VRMs etc that also needed cooling.

I ended up using Arctic Cooling F9 PWM fans swapped on to the cooler and hooked up to the card's fan header so it remained in control of the fan speeds. Although I also moddified the BIOS for 25% (from 40%) minimum fan speed too. It was super quiet at idle with 600rpm fans and still really quiet under load, not needing more than 1000rpm fan speeds.
you can read about it in this thread.

Also updated setup in this thread.

I ended up putting the stock cooler back on the card and selling it, I still have the Freedom Force cooler and various heatsink bits I used with it, including a large VRM heatsink for later style GTX260 with the VRMs all together. I could have a For Sale thread if you're interested.

Regards, Seb

Just a thought before you spend more money on a 4-5 yr old GPU. It's performance is matched by the current lowest priced gaming card, the HD 7750 that you can buy in passive form for $100, and the HD 7750 will use 35W less power in idle and up to 80W less while gaming.

This has just reminded me of a few other points. The GTX260 has a massive heatspreader underneath so no passive heatsink even covers the whole of it which means there is no off the shelf passive solution. Either you're going to have to custom build something or accept fans on it. Even so, it's a few years old now and as Steve says, a modern midrange card will better it and can be cooled passively.

Why the need to passively cool it after 4 years? Is something wrong with the existing fan or have you just decided it's too loud?

I've also found that there are 2 versions of the GTX260 216 core. A 65nm 182W model and a later 55nm 171W model. If you have the later 55nm model then you may have more options available. Are you running standard clocks and voltages? If so you might want to see if undervolting can be done reliably, this may get you some power saving so fans can run slower. BIOS modding can be done to enable this and also change the fan profiles to make it quieter.

yeah i changed my psu heatsink to figureout that it was my gpu that was making the nois i want to get rit of
when you say
the HD 7750 that you can buy in passive form for $100, and the
does it mean thatit is made to be passive or i would have to add a fan on it ot work properly? I might go with that option

I included links for passive HD 7750s in my earlier post

Hi I am from canada qc btw

im interested in a card like this but i searched for review of it , they only have reviews on saphire.

I want to know the feed backs like sometime even without fan there is an anoying sound hi electric eeeeeeee. also i wonder the way it manages load compare to other with fan

if you guys have any other suggestion at 120$ ish silence is priority

thx

I had Palit GTX260 216 core for 3 years. At stock the fans were way too loud. I was able to flash the bios using nvidia bios editor with a custom fan curve that made it "quiet enough" for me.

As for coil whine, it did have some, but only when gaming with v-sync OFF if I recall correctly. I didn't bother me because I don't mind noise that much when I have a game going. This is an old card you should not pay more than 60$ for it on local classifieds or ebay (recently sold mine for 50$).

My recent experience with computers has been that going full passive is unnecessary if you have fan control on the gpu and can tune it real low on idle. I've replaced my GPU with a Zotac GTX560 and haven't even gotten around to lowering it below 30% minimum because the noise signature doesn't bother me. I have also witnessed several sapphire 6850s that are real sleepers even though they have a fan. I'd only go fanless for a low-end GPU, but that's just me.