XFX Unveils Passively Cooled Radeon R7 240 and 250 Cards

It's not often that we see passively cooled graphics cards go through the pipeline, so when they do, it obviously catches our attention. The new Radeon R7-250 Core Edition and R7-240 Core Edition from XFX may not be the most powerful cards, but they will suffice for HTPCs.

While the XFX Radeon R9-250 Core Edition is built on a half-height PCB, due to its higher clock speeds it does need a full-height cooler to take care of it. Its GPU runs at 1050 MHz, and the 1 GB of GDDR5 memory is clocked at 4.6 GHz.

In contrast, the XFX Radeon R9-240 Core Edition features a similar half-height PCB, and because it's clocked a little lower, it can get away with just a half-height cooling solution as well, making the card low-profile. There was no official word, but with these kinds of cards we often see low profile expansion slot covers included. The GPU is clocked at 780 MHz and is wired to 2 GB of DDR3 memory which runs at 1.8 GHz.

The XFX R7-250 Core Edition will set you back about €92, and the R7-240 Core Edition will only cost you about €75. There may be cheaper solutions, but they won't be as silent.

Niels Broekhuijsen

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

  • anxiousinfusion
    The perfect home theater cards.
    Reply
  • rohitbaran
    R9 250 and R9 240 in second and third paragraphs instead of R7. Typo.
    Reply
  • Darkz0r
    Never buying XFX again after the 7970 fiasco. What a bad brand, costumer support is a copy paste joke!
    Id rather have Asus passive cooled cards or nothing at all!
    Reply
  • ocilfa
    Now if only we could have a passive cooled R9 290x...
    Reply
  • bemused_fred
    12210389 said:
    Now if only we could have a passive cooled R9 290x...

    You'd need a cooling tower.

    Reply
  • SteelCity1981
    ^^^^^ or a down clocking the hell out of it. lol
    Reply
  • Menigmand
    There is just something passively cool about these cards.
    Reply
  • chaospower
    I think waiting for the new apus is a better option for a new htpc build
    Reply
  • spookie
    12210457 said:
    12210389 said:
    Now if only we could have a passive cooled R9 290x...

    You'd need a cooling tower.

    how do you like my new build: 4x passive cooled R9 290x's in crossfire
    http://whatiswatertreatment.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/cooling-towers-nice.jpg
    Reply
  • lowguppy
    It's too bad that the best low profile card of the new R7/R9 batch is the 250, and it is about 2/3s the performance of the previous gen's low profile 7750. I still might consider the 240 for very small HTPC that has to be silent, but I'd rather have a 7750 or a larger card on a riser.
    Reply