The high-end graphics market has grown stale with flagship products from both NVIDIA and ATI being now old news. So while we wait for each camp to bring new GPU's to the market, Gigabyte opted to send us a mid-range GeForce 9800 GT, but unlike any other GeForce 9800 GT you've ever seen before. Rather than to stick with the reference cooling solution, Gigabyte's Silent Cell version earns its moniker with a monster sized fanless heatsink, making it the only passively cooled GeForce 9800 GT in existence. But that isn't the only thing the Silent Cell has going. Following the more is better mantra, Gigabyte doubled the amount of memory found on most GeForce 9800 GT cards to 1GB size. - HardwareLogic

Gigabyte GeForce 9800 GT SilentCell Cooling Review

You don't often see passive cooling solutions on anything above entry level video boards and you will likely never see one on today's flagship GPU's. These high-end cards just produce too much heat and need to for go active cooling. But can a fanless heatsink adequately cool a GeForce 9800 GT graphics card? Gigabyte seems to think so and so far it's the only company that does. And according to Gigabyte, its cell architecture amplifies natural convection by sucking cool air in and directing it over the layered fins. Not only does Gigabyte say this is effective, but they claim you can expect up to 18°C lower temps than the default fansink.

Like just about every modern heatsink Gigabyte's Silent Cell includes heatpipes, three of them in total. The trio of heatpipes runs from a large copper base that's substantially bigger than the reference design and just squirm through the front, middle and back of the dual slot cooling solution. With as active as Gigabyte's has been in the motherboard market, by now everyone should be familiar with the company's ultra durable technology. Gigabyte has ported this design philosophy over to its graphics card division and for what it's worth, their GeForce 9800 GT comes equipped with a 2oz copper PCB. and all solid Japanese capacitors.

Up until now, no manufacturer has equipped their G92 based GeForce 9800 GT card with a passive cooling solution. We typically find fanless heatsinks on low power, budget cards and while the GeForce 9800 GT isn't a flagship product by any means, it does make an serviceable mid-range part, albeit teetering on the lower end. The main draw is obviously their noise free cooling. Gigabyte's Silent Cell won't add so much as a decibel of noise to your setup, but only those with well cooled systems should apply. And on the performance end, there's nothing to entice hardcore gamers or anyone with a 30-inch display.

The biggest challenge in trying to sell such GeForce 9800 GT is competing with more powerful video cards that cost just a little more scratch. Both ATI's Radeon HD 4870 and NVIDIA's GeForce GTS 250 immediately come to mind, but then again neither of these cards sport a noiseless cooling solution that we're aware of. But ultimately it is up to you decide if this silence is worth the performance trade off. While if so, the Gigabyte GeForce 9800 GT Silent Cell version is a step above all other passively cooled video cards, and even sports a bit of overclocking headroom to boot.