ASUS EN8600GTS Silent video card review

Silent graphics boards aren't such a rarity these days, with a number of AIB partners offering passively cooled parts to differentiate themselves from the crowd.  However, to move into the higher echelons of performance while still offering passive cooling requires a lot more engineering and design work, and thus as you move towards the top of the mid-range and into high-end boards the number of silent cooling solutions on current cards thins out to almost nothing.

However, some partners are willing to take on the challenge of bringing higher performance silent graphics boards to market, and one such AIB is that grand old giant ASUS.  This company came to prominence with NVIDIA's GeForce 7 series of graphics cards courtesy of their passively cooled GeForce 7900 GT part, the EN7900GT TOP Silent, and it is a similar technology that we see on the subject of today's review, the EN8600GTS Silent.

So, silent cooling comes to the top of NVIDIA's DirectX 10 mid-range.  Is it worth a look?  Read on to find out.