Monday, September 6, 2010

fanless GPU Gigabyte Radeon HD5770 SC 1Gb

I recommend this GPU - Gigabyte Radeon HD 5770 SC - for quiet computers and for quiet gaming computers with decent airflow in the case. For a basic HTPC setup this graphic card would be an overkill, you can reach desired level of HD rendering with a much cheaper and cooler GPU or onboard graphics. This one is a middle range performance level graphic card. So far it's also the only passively cooled version of ATI Radeon HD5770 in the market.

My recommendation is based on this review by Funkykit. Gamers are propably most interested of page 5-6 (test results). Size of the cooling unit is huge and it's working well according to review. Huge size of the heatsink might cause fitting issues in some ATX-cases. Idle temp of the GPU in their test rig was 40C and they managed to reach only 52C during DirectX 11 gaming. +12C is really nothing compared to the level of performance of this graphic card. This can't be only cooling performance here, due to my experience I can say without testing that power consumption of this card must be in quite decent level. About the temperature I've seen GPU's going over 100C still running nicely. However I recommend to keep case fans spinningwith this GPU, 50C isn't a temperature that you want inside your whole case. And furmark was not yet used in this test (which is ok, furmark's  heavy loads for GPU for long period of time have nothing to do with normal use)

I found only one price tag with quick browsing: Gigabyte Radeon HD 5770 Silent Cell 1Gb for $149 CAD ($145 USD). Please comment if you find more stores. I also have interest for some tested power consumption levels, they might be a bit lower than the version with active cooling. If you find a link to a review, please comment.

Link to Gigabyte's product page

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