GTX 770 and a Silverstone FT03: Reference Blower or DirectCU II?

[Fomite]

I'm contemplating a smallish-footprint mATX gaming build using the Silverstone FT03 case. The whole cooling scheme for the case is based on stack cooling, and my intent was to have an entirely air cooled system, with fans cheerfully ushering warm air up and out the top of the machine with the help of basic physics.

The question is the choice of GPU - or specifically, the choice of GPU cooling system. I'm likely running a single GTX 770 card, and I'm trying to decide which form factor to use. In standard cases, the ASUS DirectCU II system will result in a cooler running card. My concern is that since it doesn't purely blow air up and out of the card ala the reference blower system, it'll result in overall higher temperatures as it essentially pipes warm air and turbulence into the stack. But I have no idea how big of a deal this is, and if it'll be offset by the better cooling properties of the DirectCU II card in other ways.

Thoughts?

[Chino]

Welcome to the Republic of Gamers forum, Fomite.

The orientation of that case is perfect for a blower type GPU since it will concentrate on pushing the hot air out the exhaust.

[HiVizMan]

Either will work as it is a single card.

When you go two or more then you need to focus a tad more on the types of coolers used for VGA

[Arne_Saknussemm]

I would say get card with traditional blower style cooling... will get hot of course and radiate heat into case but quite a lot of airflow is to outside. But for one card maybe the DCuII will not be a problem...depends just how good the exhaust airflow is going to be...they push a lot of hot air into cases and end up cooling themselves with their own exhaust if you don't have a real good wind tunnel evacuating the hot air.

SLI in a case with DCuII I have tried and it was not good and that was a HAF X...