I don't quite understand why this cooling device would work. The card is pulling in hot air, not cold air, from the back of the case. Once the air from the main case fans exits the case, the air just kinda sits there, especially with the mess of cables that people have at the back of their case. The passive solution here would pull this hot air back into the case, wouldnt it? Sure, the hot air would have a chance to mix slightly with cold air behind the case, but in the long run for extended gaming sessions I could see this as a potential problem.
Better just to spend the money for either a zalman cooler or liquid cooling, if you really want that silence. Personally, I'm either wearing headphones or I have the speakers going at a nice volume, so I never notice the case fans or any other noise anyways.
It would be nice to have seen sli numbers.
Primarily this review isn't about 7600 GT performance which is already well documented, but an analysis of the unique cooling system.
Also of note, the Silent-Pipe II cools both sides of the video card, and thus doesn't ignore the top side of the card like many coolers do.
As mentioned in the beginning of the article, I have recently begun to notice the sheer amount of noise my PC makes. Replacing the reference 7600 GT with the Silent-Pipe II video card in my already loud PC tower did very little to lower the noise. Sure, it removed one of the loudest components of my system, but the remaining fans were still so loud that it didn't make all that much of a difference.
On the other hand, when I tested with the 3d Aurora case, the difference between the reference 7600 GT and the Silent-Pipe II was simply amazing. With the near-silent case, the regular 7600 GT was loud and obnoxious, especially under load when the fan speed automatically turned up.