Passive Graphics Cards: Would you buy one for gaming?

[Zak33]

I would have to say no.

if you are not moving the air then it will simply sit still and get steadily hotter to a point where the convection going out the top of the case will cause negative pressure and pull new air in.

That point is probably considerably warmer than most people would want their case or components to get to.

At minimum you would realistically need at least one fan on exhaust to create that negative pressure at lower temps.

/french mode

Non

Passive cases exist,... trust me... and passive PSU's do too.

And with a passive heatisink on a cpu and a passive graphics card... especially with an SSD ... you get ... silence.

But the graphics card interests me most.. because we have some UBER top grade cards now on the market... meaning the die shrinks have enabled graphics companies to drop the heat output massively on mide and low rangers...... and they CAN play games, I'm positive.

We need a way to test this.

[Ridcully]

It depends on what games you want to play, I would not want torisk it for my gaming PC but I would consider it if I was only used the pc for less graphic intense games like football manager type games.

[directhex]

lets not forget that some cases have NO FANS.... it is viable to have no fans at all.

Well, it's not - ultimately computer components consume power and emit heat. And that heat's gotta go *somewhere*. If you can't cool the heat exchange site fast enough, then stuff overheats and dies. And whilst strictly speaking it's fine to have a system with no fans, I wouldn't use one without an air conditioner circulating the air nearby.

[scaryjim]

And whilst strictly speaking it's fine to have a system with no fans, I wouldn't use one without an air conditioner circulating the air nearby.

There are one or two - very expensive - cases that use the entire case body as a heatsink and are almost certainly suitable for use in a standard room without air-con: after all, most people's computers just dump all their heat out of the case using fans, and it still hangs around in the same, non-air-conditioned room as the computer. As long as the heat gets out of the case somehow it shouldn't be a problem. It's getting the somehow right that's the biggest issue

Zak: I reckon a desktop style case would be best, so all the heat-generating components sit on top of the motherboard and don't obstruct each other's convection flow. Lots of big vents in the top of the case, probably with a mesh covering, and properly filtered intakes at the bottom of the case. Everything sealed with grommets and brushing as much as possible, to avoid unplanned airflow. Use the convection to your advantage

Lordy, now you've got me started I can visualise exactly what I'd do. Anyone want to fund a scratch build...?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You can get a passive HD7770:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5947/s...radeon-hd-7770

Still the TDP is 108W,so you still need to consider where all the heat has to go,so I would be looking at a case with decent positive pressure.

OTH,why don't you just get a normal graphics card with a quiet active cooling solution and a case with soundproofing??

If the cooling solutions have a low frequency sound profile,you should be fine - it is the higher frequency component which is what people tend not to be able to block out.

Edit!!

An example of quiet higher performance card is the HD7850 PCS+ from Powercolor:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/P...S_Plus/27.html

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphi...d7850/?page=10

Put that in a case like a Fractal R3 or R4,with a quiet PSU and a quiet CPU cooler and you should be fine IMHO.

[ik9000]

I once had a passive card FX5200 (2 in fact, but the old Geforce FX2 probably doesn't count) and yes, I used it for gaming, but it would eventually get too hot, the machine would stutter then crash. I'll never get a passive card for gaming again.

I would use one for an HTPC or office machine quite happily, but for gaming I will always go for a manufacturer customised cooler such as the Gigabyte SOC series I currently use, which is whisper quiet even when running Crysis et al on high settings with AA and all the bells and whistles.

For quiet gaming, invest in premium GPU with decent cooling, stick it in a case with decent quiet fans and enough room for air to flow properly and keep it clear of dust. Job done. Not tested my rig but it never becomes noticeable even flat out on a hot summers day which was my aim to start with.

[deejayburnout]

Not a fan of passive cards. Don't fill me with confidence.

As for the noise, i would rather have lower temps than lower noise. Ok a card can run hot, but running hot often will reduce the life of it.

Fans all the way

[kalniel]

Yeah you can build a computer with no moving parts, which is lovely, except your heat dissipation is terrible - even turning the case into a heatsink simply puts the emphasis on moving air in the room rather than in the case. The further away you get the less power you can consume because it's harder and less effective to dissipate that heat, so while mobile devises don't need fans, they're slow.

Of course, gaming doesn't have to need powerful hardware - plenty of stuff runs on slow hardware, so if you stick to that you can get your silence, but then why go for the PC when you could use a more efficient system like something with an ARM chip.

[scaryjim]

... why go for the PC ...

For the same reason that gets most bat-mess insane stuff done...

"Because I can"

It's an interesting challenge, would make an unusual PC, and would probably be quite fun to put together. And whilst technologically it may make more sense to use more powerful components with active air cooling, there's no good reason to not make a passive gaming PC if the technology is available. And it is

As to heat dissipation, radiation and convection are actually pretty efficient, particularly over a large surface area. A big case with some kind of texturing on the outside, thermal insulation on the inside, and heatpipes or something similar to move the heat from your components to the case body, and you'd be able to keep a PC surprisingly cool. On the other hand, you'd have a PC case that was pretty warm to the touch...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

On the other hand, you'd have a PC case that was pretty warm to the touch...

Computer is where the cat is!!

[Zak33]

OK, so back on track... presuming the case has a silent fan.. and the PSU is silent with a fan.. .so cooling is sorted.

Is there anyone who has never had a Passive but who would risk trying one?

[kalniel]

Is there anyone who has never had a Passive but who would risk trying one?

Yeah I'd love to build a combined gaming/sound/htpc that was completely silent. Can't justify the cost though.

[Englander]

I personally wouldn't consider a passive GPU for gaming, even though I am very conscious of the noise of my system. In the past I've dabbled with water cooling but have now switched back to decent air cooling in a decent case. When buying GPUs, I always look for a version with double fan arrangement on the heatsink (i.e. my current XFX 6870 Black Edition). Combined with a custom fan profile and I have a very quiet, adequately cooled GPU even when gaming. Typically it's £5-10 more expensive than a standard GPU with one tiny, whiney fan at the end but that's a price I'm happy to pay.

[Zak33]

Yeah I'd love to build a combined gaming/sound/htpc that was completely silent. Can't justify the cost though.

What cooler and stuff do you have on your current rig Kal? I mean you've got a great cpu, loads ofd quality ram... a good board....

how quiet is it if you removed your 4870?

[maverick77_uk]

Hi,

Don't forget that the higher AMD APU's for the FM1 socket have "pretty" good graphics on the chip itself, within good thermal constraints - for instance the A6 3500 is triple core, comes with a Radeon 6530 onboard, which is DX 11 (although probably not powerful enough really to utilise), but has sequivalent oomph to a lower end discrete cards, and is 65W thermal envelope (including the CPU part of the chip), so would play all older games, and some newer stuff with graphics turned down, all without major additional cooling - worth a thought rather than a seperate "passive" card, as you'd have to be cooling the CPU anyway....

Cheers!

[scaryjim]

APU graphics is OK, but it's not going to even vaguely compete with a discrete card. Have a look at my review of the Hexus forum competition APU bundle and you'll see that whilst NWN and Torchlight run OK, even at lowest settings/1080p Skyrim only pushes low 20's fps. The 3500 also loses a core and 600MHz of CPU clock speed in comparison to my 3670k (although power draw is very good, which usually bodes well for cooling).

Perhaps when Trinity hard-launches we'll see APUs that can be genuinely be considered as stand-alone gaming chips, but until then I'd personally be looking at a low-power Intel chip (e.g. i5-3470T - 2.9GHz HT dual-core, turbo to 3.6GHz, 35W TDP) and a passive HD7750...