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.
