HELP - Best silent graphics card now available?

[selborne]

I am working on a very quiet build and am having trouble selecting a graphics card.

I have seen the PowerColor Radeon HD5750 1gb Silent listed as a very good silent card but it doesnt appear to be available anymore.

What I am looking for is

1. Best silent (heat sink only, no fan) graphics card.

2. Potential for SLI crossfire is a bonus

3. OR Best as close to silent video card if it comes with an onboard fan.

I am not overly interested in doing in hardcore cooling modifications to the actually card.

Any help would be much appreciated!

[selborne]

I've been looking around this I posted this and think I will wait for this to hit the shelves.

http://www.powercolor.com/global/News.asp?id=1119

The PowerColor SCS3 HD6850 features an effective passive cooling solution; with 62 piece of L shape heat sink which enlarge the heat dissipation surface areas, the excessive heat can easily being dissipated through 5 piece high performance heat pipes; furthermore, it’s equipped with cooling plate fully covers memory and PCB, ensures every key components to stay cool in a quite setting.

Also, the latest solution utilizes “Gold Power Kit” which is composed of the select components: Shielded Alloy Choke, solid capacitor and 3+1 phases power design, allows the stable and efficient overclocking entertaining experience.

PowerColor SCS3 HD6850 supports the latest Microsoft DirectX® 11 technology and HD3D technology, providing intense gaming performance and unrivalled image quality with stunning 3D visual effects. It’s also compatible with AMD Eyefinity technology, maximizing your field of view up to three displays, enables a vivid gaming experience like never before.


SCS3 HD6850
Core Speed 775MHz
Memory Speed 1000MHz(4.0Gbps)
Memory 1GB GDDR5
Memory Bandwidth 256-bit
Eyefinity Yes
DirectX® 11
CrossFireX™ Yes
Output DL-DVI-I /SL-DVI-D/ HDMI / Display Port
Game Bundle

[CA_Steve]

SLI/Crossfire with large TDP passive cards may be a problem.
- will they fit?
- will they keep cool without fans? Probably not. Fanned two card setups typically have one of the cards starved for air/run hot. Passive? doubtful.

[ces]

SLI/Crossfire with large TDP passive cards may be a problem.
- will they fit?
- will they keep cool without fans? Probably not. Fanned two card setups typically have one of the cards starved for air/run hot. Passive? doubtful.

http://Lan-gear.com has a nice setup for passive video cards. It allows you to cool them two of them with a single slow 120mm fan.

[ces]

Best silent (heat sink only, no fan) graphics card.

How about this:
The fastest passively cooled graphics card... Ever
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=62073

[systemlayers]

I don't want to say for sure but I'm reasonably sure that a Thermalright Shaman could just about passively cool a gtx 580. In hardocps test it maxed out at 64 degrees artificial load. The memory on the 580 runs cool and without heatsinks on many cards so slap some heatsinks on the memory and it just might be doable. Otherwise a 500rpm fan is always an option to.
For point of refence I run my accelero xtreme plus passively on idle (40-50 degrees) on my 580 and the fans never spin up beyond 800rpm keeping the card under 70c. This required a bios mod however.
I've had several passive cards before and they just never seem to perform like they should (same as passive cpu heatsinks). They get extremely hot in low airflow or no airflow cases and rising the case temperature (to my opinion) dangerous levels. I've had an 8500gt and 4670 passive video card. All passive heatsinks should have some sort of airflow against them at the very least to keep your bridge chip from getting too hot from rising case temperature.
But if extreme silence is one to go for the 6850 just be careful with your case temperatures if you want to go truly passive that thing is going to kick out a lot of heat.

[Cryoburner]

But if extreme silence is one to go for the 6850 just be careful with your case temperatures if you want to go truly passive that thing is going to kick out a lot of heat.

A 6850 draws around 120 watts under load, while a GTX 580 draws around 250 watts. Unless the 580 is pumping its heat directly out of the case, it should produce much higher case temperatures, even if its fan is helping circulate the air around better. I agree that you'd want good airflow with a passive 6850 though, or any relatively powerful card with passive cooling, for that matter.

I'm somehow doubting a GTX 580 could be passively cooled though, even with a Thermalright Shaman. It did remain at good temperatures in their test, but that was with a 140mm fan, likely running at its full 1300 RPMs. The Shaman's fins are spaced rather closely together, and are perpendicular to case airflow, so it probably wouldn't work all that well for cooling without a fan.