If you’re searching for a new graphics card for your desktop, you might have gone through different models with different descriptions on the cooler units attached to the card like the “blower GPU” or “Fan GPU” cooler. The main reason why you need a good cooler on a graphics card because they can get very hot while you are playing games or running some GPU intensive applications.
The components that heat the most in a graphics card include GPU or Graphics Processing Unit, the VRAM (Video Memory) and lastly VRM or Voltage Regulator Module. All of the components mentioned above needs to be cooled down otherwise it can lead to instability issues, shutdowns, freezing or even damage to the graphics card on your computer.
As mentioned above there are usually two types of air coolers and fan types that you find inside the graphics cards. One of them is blower GPU and the other one is Fan GPU. Both of these air cooling units accomplish the same task and have their advantages and disadvantages. These benefits and disadvantages may play an important role when you are buying a graphics card for your specific needs.
What is a Blower GPU?
You commonly observe a blower type cooler in laptop CPU and it comes with a blower-style fan. This type of fan takes the air from the top and pushes the air sideways to the heatsink fins from where it easily comes out from the rear. In the blower type coolers, the hot air trapped in the graphics card comes out from the rear vents where you can find the graphics card display connectors or ports. We find these coolers mainly in the reference graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD.
All the Nvidia’s Founders Edition graphics cards come with blower-style coolers only. These type of blowers are found in cheap graphics cards especially the Chinese ones. You can see a blower-style cooler with a blower type fan placed at the one end of the graphics card.
If you ask about the performance of this type of cooler, it is average and also the fan generates a minimal amount of noise and but can become very noisy at higher loads. Due to their mediocre cooling performance, the graphics cards with blower GPU are also not so good for overclocking. However, these type of coolers are relatively slimmer and are shorter in length when compared to some of the bulky open-air or the fan coolers that can consume more than two slots on your motherboard or the computer case.
Hence, by considering the factors we can say that graphics cards with blower type cooling design are best suited for eGPU box use or use in small form factor cases or PCs. Blower type coolers along with the liquid cooler with radiator are used on graphics Cards that employs Hybrid Cooling solution.
What is Fan GPU?
These open-air or Fan GPU coolers employ a traditional approach where the fan is put over the heatsink and it blows cool air on the heatsink directly on it. Most of the graphics cards use fan coolers whether it is a budget end, mid-range or high-end graphics card. When compared to blower-style in terms of size, these coolers are generally bigger with graphics cards having the same GPU.
For better dissipation and heat transfer the heatsink of these coolers may come with heat pipes whereas you will not find these heat pipes in the heatsinks of the blower fan type coolers.
A graphics card with a good open-air or a fan cooler with dual or triple fans can be overclocked to higher frequencies, which is simply not possible in blower type coolers graphics cards. All the OC Edition Graphics Cards come with the Open Air Fan Coolers having multiple fans. Below is a picture for your reference where you can see an open-air fan graphics card cooler with three fans and its airflow direction.
If you ask us about the disadvantages, it may lead to an increase in the case temperature as most of the hot air from the cooler is dispensed in the case in all directions or it gets scattered in the computer case. However, this issue can be resolved easily by having good airflow inside your PC case by having a sufficient number of case fans. We strongly recommend at least one intake and one exhaust fan for it.
The performance of fan type coolers is much better than the blower type coolers and they are also relatively silent in operation. An open-air cooler can accommodate up to three fans whereas you will find only one fan in the blower type coolers no matter how powerful the graphics card is. You may also find some small form factor graphics cards with an open-air fan cooling for use in SFF or Mini-ITX cases.
Blower Vs Fan GPU for Graphics Card
If you are looking for the usage, advantages and difference between the two types of coolers, check out the table given below.
| BLOWER GPU | FAN GPU | |
| Fan Type | Blower Type Fan | Open Air Fan |
| Number of Fans | One | Up to 3 |
| Airflow | Sideways to the rear | On the Heatsink |
| Cooling Performance | Average | Better |
| Heat Sink HeatPipes | No | Yes |
| Usage | In the reference graphic cards | In Third-party graphics card |
| Noise Level | Noisy | Comparatively Quite |
| Cooler Form Factor | Relatively Smaller | Medium To Big |
All-in-One/Closed-Loop Coolers
The other type of coolers is the AIO or All in One cooler. They have a huge advantage over any air-cooled card, that is exhaust control. The Blower style GPU tend to run hotter than the open-air and AIO models, while the liquid-cooled designs tend to be on par with the best open type coolers. The external radiator design has one important function that gives you the exhaust outside the case benefit of blower cards with the performance of open-air cooling. This feature makes AIO cards very appealing to users with limited airflow who still want to get the most out of overclocking their video cards.
In our final words, if you are getting a new graphics card and have a big enough case then you must go for Fan GPU, but if you have a small form factor case or want to use the graphics card in an eGPU box or external GPU case then it is better to opt for a graphics card with blower GPU because of its relatively smaller and slimmer form factor.
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