Wednesday, June 20th 2012
Colorful Unveils Fanless GeForce GTX 680 Graphics Card
Now see this: a fanless, passive-cooled GeForce GTX 680! Chinese graphics card designer Colorful unveiled the world's first passive-cooled GeForce GTX 680 graphics card, the iGame GTX 680 passive. The card uses a pair of detachable, dense aluminum fin heatsinks, which draw heat from the 3.5 billion transistor GPU using seven heat pipes, and dissipate it using two aluminum fin stacks on either sides of the PCB. The two stacks are joined by six 8 mm-thick heat pipes.
The cooler cumulatively has 20 heat pipes, a surface area of 2 square meters across 280 aluminum fins. The second module is optional, and is only recommended if the operating environment is warm, or if the end user is overclocking. The card is said to use a complex VRM design that draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, though we suspect the idea behind that to be heat spreading. The design guarantees reliable silent operation at reference clock speeds or mild overclocking. Display outputs include one each of dual-link DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort. Colorful is still assessing the marketability of the design. Watch this space for more.
Source:
Expreview
The cooler cumulatively has 20 heat pipes, a surface area of 2 square meters across 280 aluminum fins. The second module is optional, and is only recommended if the operating environment is warm, or if the end user is overclocking. The card is said to use a complex VRM design that draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, though we suspect the idea behind that to be heat spreading. The design guarantees reliable silent operation at reference clock speeds or mild overclocking. Display outputs include one each of dual-link DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort. Colorful is still assessing the marketability of the design. Watch this space for more.
54 Comments on Colorful Unveils Fanless GeForce GTX 680 Graphics Card
BEEFCAKE!
The second module is optional homie.
This negates the rest of your No statements.
lol
I can't stop looking at those pics! Sweet design. :rockout:
Grab some 8mm pipe, make an appropriate sized coil jig, wrap it around jig, install, and the rest is standard WC.
"Let's make a 2-slot card take up five slots so it doesn't need a fan."
I don't care how big the heatsink is, it still needs airflow over it to do its job. Not to mention you've just filled up most of your expansion slots with a cooler that costs a small fortune; say goodbye to SLI and/or expansion cards(RAID, sound, TV tuner, etc). This thing would extend past the bottom of an MATX board...
Idiots.
Would 2x 200mm @70cfm each would pretty much be silent whilst still cooling your gigantic passive heatsinks!
This is for people who want complete silence yet still want have a beast of a system ( but don't trust water cooling)
Plus it looks fucking awesome, I can imagine some really awesome casemods/ like part open bench/part case so the heatsinks are exposed looking all bad ass and such.
Steam punk maybe.
I'll take 3, please.
Oh wait...these cost how much?
Personally, cards running at 95 C or higher doesn't scare me one bit. All these temperature concerns about keeping things uder 60-70 C...:shadedshu
If you're concerned so much about silence but still want a high-end card, just turn down the fan on the stock card! As long as it stays 105C or lower, it's fine! Nowadays these high-end(and even a lot of low-end) cards have throttle points, so if it gets too hot, it'll throttle the speeds and/or voltage to keep temps in check and prevent damage.
I'm with Dave on this one. I keep both of my 7970 fans at 40%. Damn near silent and temps never break 95C, even overclocked to 1150/1800. Not once have I had a thermal shutdown or dealt with throttling, and the loudest fan(s) in my system are the ones on my CPU heatsink(which desperately needs replacing with a water loop anyway).
All this focus on passive setups is ludicrous. It only serves to increase weight, price, and bling factor, NOT functionality.
I'll say it again: IDIOCY.
Perfecting heatsinks benefits us all, down to the average consumer. Just goes to show how short sighted you are.So everything you don't like is idiotic and stupid? Right.
Here's a brand new concept for you: don't like it? Don't buy it. Or do you go around thread-crapping on everything you don't like?
anyhow, i can't wait for a review. this with 2 500rpm 120-140mm fans + a small or prebuilt wc loop for the cpu = heaven for my ears with a shitload of oc performance.
It's definitely doable, but it takes much more planning and careful choice of components.