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.