ASUS: The EN7600 GS Silent, and EN7800 GT TOP Silent

Final Words

While it might be nearly impossible to make a PC run completely silent, there are lots of ways for those concerned about noise to deal with the problem. And for those who want a quiet system for recording or whatever else, but also to play games every once in a while, a silent graphics card will help keep the noise down while still allowing you to game. Still, silent graphics solutions are specialized, so the average gamer won't mind that their card adds a few db to their computer noise. These cards are made to fit a specific need, and both the EN7600 GS Silent and the EN7800 GT TOP Silent meet this need very well.

Both of these cards are identical when it comes to noise level, but obviously there's a large difference in terms of gaming performance. It's difficult making fast cards run quiet because higher power requires more cooling and eventually you will need fans or other moving parts to cool down the processor, which in turn will generate noise. The 7800 GT is fairly high on the performance ladder, and the fact that ASUS managed to make a silent version of this card is nice. What is even nicer is the fact that the EN7800 GT TOP Silent was able to achieve a fairly high user-overclock over the already decent factory overclock. (Note that overclocking ability varies between cards of the same type.) It's fairly safe to say that those looking for both the most powerful and quiet graphics card available need look no further than the ASUS EN7800 GT TOP Silent. However, the price for this card is a bit higher than a normal 7800 GT, so the silent operation will cost you extra.

As far as pricing goes, it makes sense that a slower card like the 7600 GS would likely be easier for a manufacturer to modify to silent operation over a fast card like the 7800 GT, thus saving on costs. Currently, the ASUS EN7600 GS Silent can be bought for about $147 on Newegg, which is relatively inexpensive for what you get. It is still a budget/midrange card though, so it won't be able to give you the kind of performance you would need to run the latest games at high settings. The ASUS EN7800 GT TOP Silent lists for a much higher price of $399, and at the time of this writing we weren't able to find any of these cards for sale. Normal 7800 GTs can be found now for as low as $280, so having one of these cards that runs noiseless will be more of a luxury item for most gamers.

Overall these cards adequately fulfill their job of providing a level of graphics acceleration while making no sound at all, so for those interested in this aspect of the cards, you won't be disappointed. Which one is better for you depends mostly on your budget, and most likely the ASUS EN7600 GS Silent will be a more reasonable purchase for the consumer in the market for a card of this type. There are other low-noise solutions available, but none quite as fast as the EN7800 GT TOP Silent which makes it unique, and the likely choice for those interested in maximum performance with lowest noise levels. With NVIDIA's "slimming-down" of their most recent line of cards, we can imagine more powerful silent-operation will be easier and cheaper to achieve in the future, and we'll be interested to see what advancements are in store for us in this area.