I'm beginning to wonder if the Ref coolers are the better option.
Do you really want the non-ref versions dumping 95C heat into your case?
Seems like a trade-off between {Exhaust heat at cost of noise} or {less noise but heat in-case}
Yeah, I don't understand why everyone bags against the reference cooler so hard. Yes, it's loud - but blower is the way to go (for me). Sure, NVIDIA's blowers are way better. But these cards are also priced very competitively to offset that.
If you're comparing 780 to 290X, well, that's another story.