I'll post links to products, that were interesting, and also to ones I finally bought.
Read the last message to see the conclusion.
You will need around 30 Euro to achieve this.
The other messages document the temperature values I measured, and describe my subjective impression of the noise I heard.
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I had received a graficscard sapphire Ati 4850 "DualSlot" as a present this month.
http://www.kmelektronik.de/main_site/st ... l.stat.php
It is extremely fast, and works well with the propriatary drivers in Newyearspup (xorg 7.4).
Just games in Wine using pixelshaders do not work, a problem with the fglrx driver in general.
The card has a very loud fan, so I looked for more silent solutions.
After reading some reviews, I bought:
Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev.2
http://www.kmelektronik.de/main_site/st ... l.stat.php
The sapphire 4850 "DualSlot" is not officially supped, but works, despite the fact, that it uses a non-standard layout.
I also bought an addon with 2 small fans:
Arctic Cooling VGA Turbo Module for Accelero S1
http://www.kmelektronik.de/main_site/st ... l.stat.php
As the 4850 is a "high end chip", it uses a lot of power, and I was sceptical, if a passive solution really would not become too hot.
I have read, that the small coolers for the RAM chips sometimes fall down, so you should buy cooling-GLUE (what is something different than cooling-PASTE).
I could not get this here, so tried it using the orginial included strips only.
Until now (3 days) they hold, but do not give a stable impression.
So I will buy the glue later for long term stability.
Values:
with the original cooler, the temperature is 31 to 39 degree in an open case (I made no tests yet in a closed case).
With the passive cooler, it goes up to 65 degree (playing Riddick in wine).
With the Turbo module, it ranges from 29 to 39 degrees.
Using the fglrx driver, the temperature can be controled with this command:
while [ 1 ];do aticonfig --pplib-cmd "get temperature 0";sleep 1;done
The 2 fans from the turbo module are not loud, even with the open case. You an hear them slightly, but the improvement to the original cooler is extreme.
As they are cheap, I highly recommend to use them, as they reduce the temperature to half the value than running without them (please also read the next messages for alternatives).
I am very happy with this solution: not that expensive (several active coolers cost more), and the computer is pretty low noise now.
Positive:
cheap, good values for temperature, almost silent.
Recommended
Negative:
Just check this before you buy it:
the cooler is so huge, that it may cover the SATA connectors on the mainboard.
On some boards, you might need a 90° adapter to be able to use them.
Mark