When was the last time you bought a card with the reference cooler?

[AETAaAS]

Was thinking recently when people said the new Radeon coolers looked a little garish. So I was wondering if it really makes any difference, since almost every mid-to-high end card will come with a custom setup from the manufacturer.

Well, apart from the Titan; which nVidia makes OEMs sell with the reference cooler and the 7990 which already came with a hefty cooling setup, when was the last time you bought a card with the reference cooler?

[Flibb]

don't give a monkeys what the cooler looks like, ability and noise is what matters for me. Got bored of windowed cases about errr 10 years ago

[Macadee]

I always try to buy reference cards with reference coolers, so much easier to get water blocks for and there are usually unlocked for overvolting and overclocking.

[tonkins]

Last reference cooler I bought was a Radeon 2900xt...my god was that thing noisy and power-hungry(more to do with the card than the cooler tho). Never bought a reference cooler since

[ZaO]

I think it was probably an 8800GTX I bought back in 2008. I always prefer to get a decent cooler now, even if it means getting a lesser model card.

[pastymuncher]

My previous two cards had the reference cooler. It's irrelevant to me though because as soon as i have made sure they work ok, off comes the cooler and on goes the waterblock.

[aidanjt]

I choose reference cards intentionally because unlike modified cards, they actually make an effort to blow all the heat out the back, instead of blowing it all around my motherboard. All I care about GPU cooling is that it's quiet enough, and it keeps the GPU cool enough for it to run at stock clocks.

[Lil-Diabo]

As per some of the previous comments, I chose a reference card, basically because I knew that if I had to go watercooling down the line (which I did)
sourcing a full cover block is so much easier!
Not to mention the blower got a little noisy at 60%

[Chris40k]

My current card (HD 6950) came with a reference cooler, but I replaced it with a custom cooler as soon as I could get hold of one just to quieten the thing down.

[minicale]

Bought the evga 580 that went on offer for £110 otherwise I would have got a non reference design for the extra cost.
I plan on getting an aftermarket cooler fairly soon just deciding on which one at the moment.

[Dooms]

Many cards ago... Maybe my MX200 but thats when reference coolers were this:

[Butuz]

Picked up a reference 7970 just to see what the difference would be compared to msi / gigabyte / his cards - aye carumba it's like a little pci-e concorde! I buried it in the garden to try and silence it as even when it was unplugged it still whined!!

There is no reason to buy a reference cooler unless your deaf - it's not worth saving £20 odd in my opinion!!

Butuz

[GeorgeStorm]

My current card is using a stock cooler, was purely due to cost at the time, since it doesn't look great, isn't quiet, and isn't overly good at keeping the card cool (I mean, copes with anything at full whack, but is really rather loud by that point )

[ZaO]

Picked up a reference 7970 just to see what the difference would be compared to msi / gigabyte / his cards - aye carumba it's like a little pci-e concorde! I buried it in the garden to try and silence it as even when it was unplugged it still whined!!

There is no reason to buy a reference cooler unless your deaf - it's not worth saving £20 odd in my opinion!!

Butuz

20 odd quid? Come on, there's way more difference than that between a reference and decent third party cooler lol...

[=assassin=]

The last card I had with a reference cooler was a Leadtek NVidia 7900GS. I've had cards by XFX(5850) and ASUS(6670) since then that have had non-reference coolers, although the XFX one wasn't a huge amount different, just having what looked like a better fan. The ASUS one is quite fancy for such a low class of card. I did replace an old 6600GT (non reference too) with a Palit GeFore 220 a while back, but I'm not sure whether it was reference or not, it seemed a little different, but wasn't overly fancy, being a very low end card.

[dfour]

3 out of my 4 previous cards have been stock coolers. 6950 when it came out then a custom cooled saphire 6950 to xfire with. Dumped them for a 6990 but fitted with a water block as the stock cooler is a monster howler and then a 6970 with stock cooler to tri-fire but eventually replaced it with a water block as it was the loudest thing in my machine while gaming when it span up.