PowerColor 7850 SCS3 Passive Review

Credit where it’s due, PowerColor have taken a high TDP card and put a passive cooler on it. This concept is something that we normally see other partners avoid with a barge pole as keeping a GPU core with a TDP over 100W is not easy by any means.

Keeping passive cards cool does believe it or not require an amount of surrounding airflow, so whilst they are not actively cooled with their own fans, a fan of some sort elsewhere in a case is required to create some form of airflow. This reason is demonstrated clearly by the huge increase in temperature that was experienced when taking the card out of a case environment and installing it into an open air chassis. The temperature on the core seen at idle rose from a toasty 45c right up to 55c and at full load a whopping core temperature of 105c was seen, which lets face it is very hot.

On the performance side of things, the SCS3 is just like any other 7850 and there is no real loss in visual performance to seen with frame rates and benchmark scores right on par with two other 7850’s that I have looked at previously. Obviously a card of this nature is not really going to be used in a budget gaming rig as the temperatures are going to cause the remainder of the system to consequently run hot. Where I see this card more fitting is in a HTPC environment where the typical GPU loads are not going to be as heavy and consequently the temperatures that the card will be operating under will be lower. Also a passive card is ideal for this type of installation where the zero acoustic output is the dream for avid home theatre users.

On the whole I’m fairly contempt with this card and I will hand it to PowerColor for having a real good go at keeping such a high TDP core cool with no fan, but whilst this is a good start, there is always scope for improving the cooling performance – perhaps by enlarging the cooling surface area  with a longer card. The only other issue that I can see will need to be addressed is the CrossFire bridge. Whilst most users are not likely to connect two of these together, there is the potential that someone would want to, after all, AMD have designed these cards to be configured in pairs as well as single units. The heat pipe that blocks access to the bridge however is an issue and perhaps a revision 2 of this cooler would resolve this minor design fault.

Bottom line, PowerColor have taken on quite a challenging task to keep a mid range cool under passive conditions, and its fair to say they have pulled it off with a working product that gives scope for improvement is future SCS3 generations. It’s not a card aimed at mainstream gamers and some care and attention is going to be needed to get a good amount of airflow around the card, but if you have the time to invest in this then what you have is the option for zero noise output from the world’s first fan-free 7850.