PowerColor has been playing around in their lab with the new AMD Radeon HD6850 chip, and is now nearly ready to introduce a new Radeon HD6850 with passive cooler. The company is currently evaluating a new design that makes use of a large GPU heatsink featuring an aluminum fin array that ensures the card occupies just two expansion slots, while adding surface area by propagating to the top of the card, in an L-shape.

The heatsink uses no less than five heat pipes to convey heat to the fins. PowerColor’s card will be branded under the company’s “SCS3″ line of silent graphics cards. Based on the 40 nm “Barts” silicon, the AMD Radeon HD 6850 features 960 stream processors, and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface. Availability and pricing is unknown as the design is yet to be finalized. This will surely introduce a completely silent cooling solution to consumers seeking for quiet system in systems like a HTPC or sort. However, remember that this is a passive cooled graphic card, so you’ll actually need a very good case with excellent airflow in order to keep it cool without any fans on it. Probably good for those countries that face cold weather all the time. I can’t imagine how this thing works during the summer, or in tropical countries. Still, that’s one badass graphic card, and it’s huge!

SOURCE via Techpowerup