PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Hi gang.

I've just bought a bunch of components to replace my much loved Asus P4C800E-Deluxe, P4 3.2GHz Northwood and Radeon 9600Pro passive in my rack based daw.

I've got an Asus P5K, Wolfdale 8400, 4Gb Corsair ram and the bit I regret; a Gigabyte Nvidia 8500GT graphics card. The reason I regret it is that it runs too damned hot and I wanted to put my old Yamaha SW1000XG next to it so I can still use the midi instruments for quick ideas etc. I'll put my two Scope cards in the other two PCI slots.

Even with two quiet Akasa 80mm chassis fans in the back of the case blowing out and a 120mm fan in the front blowing in, I think the heat inside is going to be too much from the graphics card.

Can anyone here share their experiences of other cards that would be better suited? I need dual-head, cool and passive that is cheap and only takes the space of the PCI-E slot. This is a dedicated daw with no networking or games etc. I don't mind whether it's an ATI or Nvidia, although I've always had good experiences with ATI AGP cards.

Thanks in advance.

Strattosphere

I've a Matrox Parhelia APVE which runs great and does up to triple head. It has a small fan so it could easily run fanless with a bigger sink or a well ventilated case.

Matrox also does dual head and quad head Millenium series which are fanless and are a charm to work with (I use them at work).

They're a bit more expensive than cheap NVidias or ATIs, but they're very good workhorses, very comfortable to work with and last ages.