PowerColor Rolls Out Passively Cooled HD 7850 SC3 Card

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PowerColor has announced the arrival of a passively cooled HD 7850 graphics card.

PowerColor is rolling out an HD 7850 graphics card, but not just any HD 7850. This one will be passively cooled, thereby featuring no moving parts or producing any fan noise. It will be marketed under the name SC3 HD 7850.

The graphics card features 1 GB of GDDR5 memory, which runs over a 256-bit memory interface at 4.8 GHz, has a core clock speed of 850 MHz, and features DirectX 11.1 compatibility as well as Eyefinity.

The SC3 HD 7850's cooler is made of an array of aluminum fins to which heat is brought through six heat pipes. Furthermore, the graphics card is built using the Gold Power Kit, meaning that it has PowerPAKSO-8's inside as well as Ferrite Core Chokes and solid capacitors.

At the time of writing, there is no word on pricing or availability.

Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

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13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • christiangordon
    I am interested in this!
    Reply
  • zooted
    That's a good amount of horsepower for a passive cooling, nice.
    Reply
  • Shneiky
    Interesting piece of hardware. I would be really interested in purchasing this for OpenCL acceleration. My only concern is temps at 80/90% load for 10 or more minutes. Sometimes these cards create a heat pocket. I am using Asus passive cards for years and in certain conditions that heat pocket really gets temps sky-high. Should be tested in a case with CPU centered cooling configuration. After all I think this card is a better fit for workstations (lets not start about the old argument what is a workstation and what is not) than for gamers. Better OpenCL computation than nVidia, good multy monitor support and snappy view port in 3D applications. Next to see is temp and price.
    Reply
  • halcyon
    While I like the thought of passive cooling it would seem, at first thought, that if the card causes high temps those will simply leak into the rest of your system. So you'd have to have really good airflow to accommodate the potential temperature increase.
    ...or am I over-thinking it?
    Reply
  • CarolKarine
    if you want a quiet system that has some oomph, go watercooling. passive cooling works, but not for a lot of load all the time.
    Reply
  • spentshells
    No word on pricing but let me assure you it will be a lot and worth it.
    Reply
  • icemunk
    Passive cooling is great, but you still need good airflow in your case.
    Reply
  • cirdecus
    Pretty cool. My experience with modern passively cooled cards is that you need a ton of airflow in your case along with a very low ambient room temperature.
    Unfortunately, most people purchasing this card will be aiming for as little fans as possible, which ultimately will cause this card to get too hot.
    Reply
  • zooted
    That's a good amount of horsepower for a passive cooling, nice.
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    I love passively cooled cards! One of my greatest hopes of the next gen cards is that the die shrinks will allow for more upper midrange cards to be passively cooled. My system had decent airflow with nice big quiet low RPM fans, and I hate that most GPUs come with big noisy blower units, or inefficient normal fans. I replaced the stock fan on my GTX570 with a nice quiet Zalman cooler set on low, and that seems to do the trick, but if next gen I can get a more powerful card with passive cooling then I will be all over that!
    Reply