Noise and Cooling

Cooling wise, while overclocked and at full load the 8600 never went above 60 degrees C which is pretty impressive considering the hefty clocks this card was running. However, temperatures like these often come at a price and this situation is no different. The fan on the cooler is pretty darn loud. Not so much that you’ll be topping yourself to stop the humming, but it would be completely unacceptable in silent PCs and would annoy most gamers that weren’t using headphones. The card itself also produced a slight humming sound under load which is also quite irritating.

I understand the need for good cooling on a card that is pre-overclocked, but a quieter fan could have been used, surely?