This is a axial fan:

They usually sit inside the card, blowing air along the cooling vents and outsides of the pc case.

They are more effective at moveing air outsides your pc case (which is a good thing, why all the newer cards have them).

"my Gigabyte R9 290 Windforce, what are those fans?"

those are blower type fans, and most of the air is just re-circulated inside your pc case.

I think it's the other way around.

That's an axial card.

A blower card, which tipically are all reference cards, have a fan in one extreme that moves air through the card and the heatsink and exhausts the warm air out of back of the card, out the case.

An axial cooler, as most if not all third party coolers like the Gigabyte Windforce one of your pic are, directs the air directly to the heatsink(s), but the resulting warm air is exhausted in the case, not out. That means that you need a case with good airflow or your components will get cooked by their own generated heat.

Ahh... so they're fundamentally different. And for CPU it's always axial cooling, yes?

So in simple terms, axial is better to cool the card but at the expense of the whole system?

My computer case is open because I've been lazy to put back the case wall after I've been tampering with the hardware. Is that good or bad for the cooling of the system?

That depends on when is next year. After all, early next year Nvidia will launch the GP102 chipset that will power the next Titan and Ti cards. And, unless Nvidia has completely lost its mind, the GTX 1080 will lower its price accordingly.

Oh, and who knows when Vega will launch: http://videocardz.com/61361/amd-confirms-vega-10-gpu-reaching-development-milestone

There are actually two kind of CPU coolers too (three if we add the closed liquid coolers): towers and low profile.

The low profile ones are like the reference coolers from Intel or AMD, although there are some big monsters from other brands like Noctua. They work like an axial cooler from a GPU: a fan that pushes air through a heatsink that sits on top of the CPU. They have the advantage that they also cool the components  surrounding the CPU, but they do it with hot air.

Tower coolers are the most common ones, and also the ones that give best results. There are lots and lots of examples and sizes, with some of them weighing over 1Kg. The cooler sits on top of the CPU, with heat rising over the heatpipes to a stack of fins where the air from one or two fans get rid of them.

And no, you shouldn't have to had any problem for having your case open. There are plenty of open air cases our there. As long as you CPU and GPU are well cooler by their respective coolers, you'll be fine.

Many review sites test their CPU and GPU on an open air bench, to make the work of replace the components a lot easier.

Scisca said: Arrr! Can't wait for these cards! For the full lineup of custom versions and OC tests. I hope stock is around the performance of 980, while after OC it gets near 980Ti. It would be the greatest steal in history of GPUs Though unfortunately I really don't like what Sapphire showed, which is sad, considering I wanted to buy their card. I hope MSI and others release a sexy looking card.

lol the card will be inside a case, what does it matter how it looks?

But yeah I know, psychologically it's important. I love the feeling when you've just bought a new graphics card and opened the package.

What GPU do u have now?

It could happen, there have been rumors that Vega may release earlier than AMD originally said, in October this year. Considering the fact that full Vega has nearly twice the CU's as the RX 480, it's very possible that full Vega will outperform the 1080 and maybe even the 1080ti. So in the end it'll most likely come down to pricing, will the Vega cards be cheaper than 1070, 1080, and 1080ti.

Basically the difference is that centrifugal (blower) coolers lock hot air inside the card's cooler shroud and continuously reblow it over the heat sink with greater air pressure than axial fans produce. Axial fans exhaust hot air outwards from the card, where the exhaust fans on your computer case can then blow the hot air out of your case, while your case's intake fans let in fresh cool air to replace it. It's my understanding that centrifugal (blower) fans run at higher speeds than axial fans usually, and therefore are a bit louder. Generally speaking both styles work well, it's just a matter of personal preference. I prefer my cards to be quiet, so I like axial fans. Others like to keep hot air trapped inside their graphics card, instead of letting it out into the computer case with the other PC components.

Edit: Sorry, I got part of that wrong. Blower coolers don't trap hot air in, they exhaust it out the back of the card, instead of into the case. However, because they only have 1 fan, that 1 fan typically runs at higher speeds than the 2 or 3 fans you usually find on axial cards, and therefore they produce more noise. So it's basically a choice between a quieter card that warms up the inside of your case more, or a louder card that exhausts hot air directly out of your case.

I have a huge window in my sidepanel, so I'll be seeing the GPU all the time I want it to look cool.

Right now I'm running on the integrated GPU that's on the i5 6600k. I've only recently built this PC and I've decided to wait for Polaris instead of going with a R9 390 and I'm happy I've waited