Fanless Graphics card for PTGui

[Mike Cowlishaw]

Recently I was a bit shocked to find that my current PC is 14 years old .. so about time for a new one.

I'm looking to buy a fanless PC that's is suitable for PTGui.  The PTGui FAQ helpfully suggests to get a graphics card with at least 4GB of memory, but is seems only 2GB cards (or smaller) can be fanless.

It seems odd to put a graphics card with a fan into a fanless computer, so my question is:  is it still worth it (for PTGui) to put a 2GB card in the computer?

Many thanks -- Mike

[PTGui Support]

Hi Mike,

Certainly, it's just a recommendation. 2GB would also work, it's better
than no GPU.

Kind regards,

Joost Nieuwenhuijse
www.ptgui.com

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[Mike Cowlishaw]

OK, thanks.   

Mike

[Harald Thingelstad]

When building my computer I thought of going fanless. But it would have to be quite limited and I also like to have power so I decided it would only have to have cooling powerful enough that the fans don't really have to turn of for regular use. A fanless computer is nothing more than a computer with large capacity for passive cooling, and fans won't really be all that much in the way until the computer really needs it. 
I see it as a best of both worlds. It definitively won't be a small thing but the popularity of small size is your main enemy, not if it has fans or not.
Something to think about?

[Mike Cowlishaw]

My current computer is very quiet .. for a few months.  But by then the fans have sucked in so much dust that I have to clean it all out (not my favourite way of spending time), and the cycle repeats, so I have decided on fanless this time.  Size isn't an issue, because the space where the PC sits (under my desktop) isn't really much use for anything else. 

I got a helpful e-mail from the PC supplier today with some estimates of when the graphics card fan might kick in.  For me it sounds as though the only apps that will really make use of it is PTGui and some mapping software I use so those won't be in use most of the day (especially mornings, when I especially want silence when programming, etc.).

Anyway, many thanks for the thoughts! 

Mike

[PTGui Support]

Performance of fanless systems is very limited in my experience. Be sure
to check cpubenchmark.net (for example) and compare with a regular CPU.

And PC cases with dust filters exist!

Kind regards,

Joost Nieuwenhuijse
www.ptgui.com

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[Mike Cowlishaw]

The performance of the system I've ordered (https://www.quietpc.com/sys-a90-fanless-i18) is the same as the system with a fan from the same supplier.  It's massively faster than my current 4-core 2011 system, so I am sure I'll be happy with it!   There is also another reason for going fanless: I expect to get a repeat order for my wife (perhaps only different in graphics card) and as a polyglot language enthusiast she dislikes fan noise even more than I do :-).

Following your advice I'm getting a semi-fanless graphics card with 8GB memory.

I did try dust filters but they restricted airflow so much that the fans were spinning essentially all the time and at noticeably high (loud) revs, so I took them off (this was a few years ago).

Thanks for the advice and help!

Mike

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[PTGui Support]

I see! The fanless systems I've seen were using low TDP Celeron
processors. But this looks good indeed.

Kind regards,

Joost Nieuwenhuijse
www.ptgui.com

On 10/1/25 12:23, Mike Cowlishaw wrote:
> The performance of the system I've ordered (https://www.quietpc.com/sys-

> a90-fanless-i18 <https://www.quietpc.com/sys-a90-fanless-i18>) is the

> same as the system with a fan from the same supplier.  It's massively
> faster than my current 4-core 2011 system, so I am sure I'll be happy
> with it!   There is also another reason for going fanless: I expect to
> get a repeat order for my wife (perhaps only different in graphics card)
> and as a polyglot language enthusiast she dislikes fan noise even more
> than I do :-).
>
> Following your advice I'm getting a semi-fanless graphics card with 8GB
> memory.
>
> I did try dust filters but they restricted airflow so much that the fans
> were spinning essentially all the time and at noticeably high (loud)
> revs, so I took them off (this was a few years ago).
>
> Thanks for the advice and help!
>
> Mike
>
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2025 at 9:06 PM 'PTGui Support' via PTGui Support
> <pt...@googlegroups.com <mailto:pt...@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
>
> Performance of fanless systems is very limited in my experience. Be
> sure

> to check cpubenchmark.net <http://cpubenchmark.net> (for example)

> and compare with a regular CPU.
>
> And PC cases with dust filters exist!
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Joost Nieuwenhuijse

> www.ptgui.com <http://www.ptgui.com>

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[Jozef Jurik]

Hi, 

I am succesfully using PTGui with this fanless graphic card of 4GB of RAM:

Palit GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

jojo

[Mike Cowlishaw]

Yes it seems the technology has 'moved on' :-).

Once it arrives the next hurdle will be to see whether Zinstall lives up to its promises.   I do not warm up to the idea of re-installing 14 years of apps and tweaks that I use from a 'clean' system ...

Mike

[Mike Cowlishaw]

Thaanks, yes that card (different brand) is what I have in my current PC.  But I didn't want to move it to new PC as I shall keep the current PC as backup for at least a few months .. there are so many times one needs to go back and compare settings from one to another ("did they really remove e-mail search / Recent Places / windows edges / live icons  in Windows 10?), etc.  :-)  I have a horrible feeling that move to Windows 11 will have many more backwards steps ...

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[Lionel Drew]

Mike, I have had to deal with similar reinstalls and it got very old very quickly.  So, I have an idea that might help you.

I’m on a MacBook, so some apps come from the App Store, others like PTGui are external downloads.  For external downloads I keep at least the latest download in a separate folder in the Mac OS Downloads folder.  That creates a list of what I installed, and need to consider if I ever have to do a full reinstall to a new system.  Downloads gets backed up automatically, and I also copy it to an external drive periodically.

I try to avoid adding apps as far as possible for various reasons including the complications of a reinstall.

It does take some space, but I find that a small price to pay for the peace of mind.

Hope that helps you.

Regards

Lionel

[Lionel Drew]

My apologies, I think I did not get my post into the correct thread.  It’s intended for Mike Cowlishaw.

Regards

Lionel

[Mike Cowlishaw]

That's exactly what I do on my Windows system.  Also I keep all my data on a separate drive from the OS drive, so I can do a clean install of Windows on the OS drive without losing any 'real' data, just settings, etc.

But I use a lot of applications (8 virtual machines for testing decimal arithmetic, for example) and installing each of them and setting them up would probably be a couple of weeks of work, even though I have extensive notes.

But this is drifting a bit far off-topic perhaps ... :-).

Mike 

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[Mike Cowlishaw]

I'm very happy to report that I am now up and running on a new PC.  Zinstall worked well (with a couple of caveats) but I did have problems, as usual, with Microsoft networking support/changes.

Today I measured PTGui processing times on a 'known' large panorama.   In short, the new PC was about 15 times faster than the old one, so it was time (and money) well spent, I think (especially when amortized over (perhaps) ten years!

The  summary is below; feel free to ask for specific details.

Mike

- - - - - - - - - - 

Timing PTGui aligning and stitching Kenilworth-Castle-20250810\Pan B
on different PCs.

Pan B is 18x6 images  (9504 x 6336, 60.2MP).
Result is cropped to fit JPEG: uncropped is 126K pels wide.

a)  On MFC5 (2011 PC, specs below):

    Align Images: 05:14   (mm:ss)

    Cropped to 57866 x 14979

    Stitch Pano:  08:49

b) On MFC6 (2025 PC, specs below):

    Align Images: 00:21   (mm:ss)

    Cropped to 57866 x 14903

    Stitch Pano:  00:36

Speedups:

  Align images:    15.95 x faster
  Stitch Panorama: 14.69 x faster

----- Machine specifications -----

MFC5:

  Device Name    MFC5
  Processor      Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400S CPU (4-core, 2.50 GHz)
  Installed RAM  16.0 GB
  Storage         932 GB SSD Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB,
                 1.82 TB SSD Samsung SSD 870 EVO 2TB
  Graphics Card  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 4GB)
  System Type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
  Pen and touch  No pen or touch input is available for this display
  OS             Windows 10 Pro

MFC6:

  Device name    MFC6
  Processor      Intel(R) Core(TM) Ultra 5 225 (10-core, 3.30 GHz)
  Installed RAM  32.0 GB
  Storage         931 GB SSD Samsung 9100 PRO 1TB,
                 1.86 TB SSD Samsung 990 PRO 2TB
  Graphics Card  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 8GB
  System type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
  Pen and touch  No pen or touch input is available for this display
  OS             Windows 11 Home