This Mini $109 GTX 1050 Might Be Great For A HTPC / Living Room Steam Linux PC

[starshipeleven]

That's mainly due to usage pattern. Consumer cards are for games, where you launch Crysis 3, and your GTX 750 is brought to its knees pegged at 100% for 3 hours straight. CAD/CAM is a lot more bursty, and doesn't load the card for such long durations, so it can get away with a smaller cooler.

I have some reservations about that.

Secondly, CAD/CAM cards also tend to be in large well ventilated Dell/HP/IBM workstation cases, while gamer cards have to deal with getting crammed into cheapo under-sized consumer peecee's.

Still reservations. The workstation card is fully enclosed and dumps heat from the back of the PC, one of the reason they are slim is because you can fit more of them in the same space.