Silent PC enthusiast and redditor revocases has been showing off a very interesting AMD Radeon RX 6400 modification (h/t FanlessTech). The modification work meant chucking away the stock active cooler, precisely machining a 3 mm copper cold plate and mount (covering both GPU and memory), and then fixing on an Arctic Accelero S1 passive cooler (discontinued). In testing, the project was a resounding success, with the GPU running at just a smidgeon over 50 degrees Celsius under load – but we have to ask, is this passive solution overkill?
Passive PC systems have a strong following, as silence is golden. However, to cool higher performance PC components a passive cooler might sometimes start to dominate your build. We have seen this with some recent implementations of passive coolers and cases. To be fair, we wouldn’t put revocases' RX 6400 mod into this category, though.
The Radeon RX 6400 is a 54W graphics card, so doesn’t present a strenuous challenge for passive cooling technology. Instead we could say the low TGP makes the card a comfortable target for a modest passive cooling adaptation. In revocases’ shared images you can see that the passively cooled (ex)low-profile Radeon ran at a more than comfortable average GPU temperature of 54 degrees Celsius (hot spot 60) when under full load. Sadly, off-the-peg choices for passive GPU coolers are incredibly limited or we would suggest using a smaller one.
In the images, the RX 6400 PCB is absolutely dwarfed by the Arctic Accelero S1, and might look somewhat silly outside of the context of a PC. However, in November last year we reported on the Intel Arc A380 (>75W) being cooled by the same Arctic Accelero S1. In the visual context of a complete passive build that card looked reasonable – it was installed next to a Noctua NH-P1 cooled CPU.
Considering things from another angle, a commercially produced passive card like the Palit GeForce GTX 1650 KalmX looks well proportioned at 138 x 178 x 38 mm, and the GPU will peek at around 80 degrees Celsius under load. The Palit isn’t a great amount smaller than the Arctic Accelero S1 cooler at 138 x 215 x 33 mm (but you have to add the card which will add further bulk).
We hope that the great efficiency gains touted for the latest AMD and Nvidia graphics architectures means that some more compact passive commercially available graphics cards hit the market. Graphics card makers could be attracted by the passive premium that silent PC enthusiasts might pay for something more performant than the likes of the RX 6400, Arc A380, or GTX 1650.
