See this and thought it might be some use to somebody. http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...M+(Manufacturer+Refurbished)+?productId=45975 Very cheap i would think @ £155 (time of writing) I bought one of these quite some time back for £160, 2 years warranty. Put a Z3000F on and have a really great card clocked @ 850 for not sooo much money. Might be of use to sombody.
With a new Nvidia architecture around the corner It's probably best to resist temptation. Then the equivalent 500 series will hopefully drop in price like the 400 series did when the refresh happened!
Probably not as they always command a premium but I can certainly see the reference GTX 570 and GTX 580 dropping.
I'd encourage people to go for this - never been happier than I am now having upgraded to a 480. It's a beast, and overclocked it's very close to a 580 for only a fraction of the price. As for heat, you don't need water; my 480 even overvolted and overclocked has never gone higher than 80C, thanks to the amazing Gigabyte cooler. I've heard great things about the Zalman mentioned in the OP. @ Blogins, it'll take quite some time before the 5 series drops in price - you'll need a 570 to get close to the performance of a 480, and they will need to come down in price by nearly £100 to be worth it. I'm SO glad I returned my 570 to Scan after thinking that £240 just was not worth it.
yeah aftermarket gpu coolers are alot better than they used to be the zalman is pretty awesome as is the gelid icy vision also the deepcool v6000 is worth a look i think the arctic cooling accelero extreeme edges all the others ( in both noise and cooling ) but it is rather rare when i upgrade ill be getting one of the above ( probs the accelero if i can find one ) on a cheep 580 / 670 / 7970 ( which ever i can afford at the time ) and overclocking the pants off it will keep my eyes in the marketplace ( and fleabay )
I fitted a Gelid Icy Vision on my son's 480 and I now have to use central heating to heat up the room, not his graphics card.
Its tempting to sell my 580 and buy two of these. It would be a shame if the games I play did not take advantage of SLI though. Anyone know if Star Wars: TOR can utilise two graphics cards in SLI? Apart from the increased heat, any other disadvantages you can think of?
LOL at this.... never higher than 80c? I don't expect my GPU to go past 40c in summer. 23c in winter. When my GPU was on air it was hitting 80 which for me is not acceptable.
Love my 480, shes under water now which keeps her quiet and cool, great card. Got a spare waterblock going if anyone needs one!
Tbh it don't matter what type of cooling u use it will still dissipate the same abount of heat into a room as it is still using the same amount of power, watts = heat, the better the cooling solution just means the heat is moved away from the card and into the room faster, when gaming i have my window open all year round even in these icy times as even tho my 580's are watercooled and never usually go above 40c it's still like having the central heating on.
That's why I have my water rad sitting by the window with the rad fans sucking in outside air. There is none of that recirculating heated air bollocks.
Seriously feathers is this all you do just spam? for a start 80 is bloody good for a 480 when overclocked on air, I know 580's that go higher than that. and as for this thread, nice find by the op 480's are good card's alot of the problems with loud fans etc for the stock card at least have been fixed with numerous driver update's, so if your on a budget I'd say go for it, especially if you can afford to watercool a couple of them in SLI, and as for the guy who said he's tempted to swap his 580 for two of these, stick with the 580 mate and then get another when the new 6XX series is released, then SLI them and you can always disable SLI, and just use the grunt of 1 580 (Y) the advantages of having the a fast single GPU card over a dual GPU
That's very interesting about the fan noise. I remember watching a video on ars or similar tech site and the fan was horrendous. It's a tempting (cheap) replacement for what appears to be an ailing 5850 of mine although I'm not sure my 500w PSU would enjoy the experience.
