Passive cooling - opinions?

[Ghosth]

Open up the side of the case,  leave it open. Point a 8 - 10 inch Tabletop fan at the GPU.

May not be ideal, but I'm thinking it will cool better than the passive cooler.
Which you'll end up doing the same thing with.

I've got the ATI 2600 with the passive cooler which works fine as long as I have a fan blowing on it.
Wife brings home cheap round 7 to 8" round tabletop fans. They work great for cooling. 110v ac powered so no drain on the PC power supply. Low speed for winter cooler temps, high for summer.

[RTHolmes]

well ive always built my own PCs, but this is more of an experiment really to do as little as possible to a cheap PC and see if it can be used as a kickass AH box. I just got the cheapest business desktop from HP with an intel dual core, cost £429 inc monitor and 3yr onsite hardware contract, dropped in an £88 9800GT and a 550w PSU i had lying around, works great so far

before I fit the acrtic cooler I want to get some numbers on the temps, but over a long period for comparison. I have speedfan, but would like to be able to save the data (plus speedfan wont show the history for temps and fan speed simultaniously). anyone know of a temp/fan speed utility that will save long term (1day) data?

[TheZohan]

the biggest key to passive cooling is airflow, airflow and airflow. if the heat isn't dissipating then you components being cooled will be toast.