Video Card Recommendation

[lohmein]

Hi everyone,
I've got a box I've been using for a few years now that's always had mediocre air flow, to the point where the video card ran hot, but never to where I had any problems with it overheating. I recently moved to New York City, and due to space constraints, my HTPC is now forced to sit in a small entertainment unit from Ikea, where air flow is awful and the vid card keeps overheating. It's got passive cooling, just a heatsink, so I'm looking to replace it with something with a fan (or a much better heatsink, but I figure that'll just give me the same problems). What would you all recommend?

Right now I have a Geforce 6600, 256MB, PCI-E x16 slot XFX brand vid card. I'd prefer to stick with Geforce, as I've been happy with the nVidia purevideo decoders. Preferably as quiet as possible, but I'll take guaranteed cool over a little noise if need be. Doesn't have to be extremely powerful card as long as it can output component (no HD for me yet, probably for a while) nicely. Trying to keep cost under $120, but I can stretch to $150 if it's a really good deal.

Thoughts? And thanks a ton everybody : )

-Lance

[Ender]

I really like the Radeon 2600 Pro Series. Excellent PQ on my HDTV, and it does a fine job of hardware acceleration.

I have the AGP Variant of the Visontek 2600 Pro 512MB.

[CollinR]

MSI 8600GTS Diamond pro is what I have been eyeballing. HDCP and HDMI.

[tawd1992]

I'm extremely happy with my 2400 pro, so happy that I just bought another one for my other pc. I have an 8500GT that is worthless because Nvidia doesn't include underscan/overscan adjustments in their drivers for SD content.

[autoboy]

The 6600 is a fine card. Why don't you fix your airflow problems? Head over to silentpcreview.com and ask for some quiet airflow fixes.

[lohmein]

Hi Autoboy,
I figured I'd get a card with a fan because I'm working out of an older Ahanix Dvine case (http://www.vesalia.de/e_ahanix_mce601.htm) that doesn't have any real air inflow from the front, which is made worse by the fact that it's having to reside in a small ikea cabinet. I've got a big silent fan on the cpu that keeps its temp down, but I figured the video card overheating was due to the passive cooling.

Since I have only 1 empty slot next to vid card, and I haven't seen much online recommending single slot slot-fans (and that several user reviews seem to mention that XFX cards tend to run hot, no matter their model), I figured it was time to make a switch.

I could well be wrong on these assumptions; are there good slot-fans out there? Or afforable larger heatsinks/heatsinks+fans that I could just swap out and save money? Alternatives are definitely welcome, and I'll check out silentpcreview too; thanks for the rec.

-Lance