A Passively-Cooled GeForce GTX 1650: KalmX by Palit
by Anton Shilov on February 7, 2020 5:00 PM EST
Passively-cooled video cards are rather rare these days, as the bulk of the market has made peace with today's dual fan actively cooled cards. Luckily, there are a still a few companies releasing passive designs, such as Palit Microsystems, who has introduced its fanless GeForce GTX 1650 KalmX.
The Palit GeForce GTX 1650 KalmX (NE5165001BG1-1170H) uses a custom PCB and comes with a sizable passive cooling solution. The double-wide heatsink incorporates a pair of heatpipes, and is considerably taller than the card as well. All told, with the heatsink factored in, the card measures 178 mm long and is 138 mm high. And unsurprisingly, given the strict thermal limitations in play, Palit is playing things conservatively here, and the card runs at NVIDIA official GTX 1650 reference clockspeeds of 1485 MHz/1665 MHz (base/boost).
Typical for GTX 1650 cards, Palit is using 4 GB of 8 Gbps GDDR5 memory here. The card has two DisplayPort 1.4a outputs and one HDMI 2.0b port.
Officially, Palit rates the card for a TDP of 75W; and judging from what we've seen with other GTX 1650 cards, that's probably a bit conservative as well. Which is all the better for Palit, since it makes their job of passively cooling the video card all the easier. The other upside of being a sub-75W card is that an auxiliary PCIe power plug isn't required, so the card can be dropped into a system and immediately used with no further internal wiring.
Palit has not revealed an MSRP for the GeForce GTX 1650 KalmX. NVIDIA’s regular MSRP for the GTX 1650 ($149), though I wouldn't be too surprised to see Palit charge a premium for a unique, passively-cooled card.
Related Reading:
- Palit Announces KalmX: A Passively-Cooled GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Graphics Card
- Akasa's Turing: A Passively-Cooled Chassis for Intel’s Bean Canyon NUC
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- GALAX Launches Low Profile GeForce GTX 1050 OC and 1050 Ti OC
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Source: Palit
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CheapSushi - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
There's always a person making a comment like this that assumes just because you want a passive GPU means you will have ZERO, absolutely ZERO, fans in the entire system. As if one passive component means ALL passive components. And then if you state no, they'll say, well what's the point if it's ALL not passive? Well genius, as another commentator said, you can have a larger slower case fan that does the work. Case design matters to. Why can't the PC world have some options like this without people constantly complaining when it does exist?senttoschool - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
It's quite funny, isn't it?Every Anandtech product article has at least a few people saying that the product is worthless because they don't have a need for it. It's like the world revolves around them.
lilkwarrior - Saturday, February 8, 2020 - link
If it's a criticism of how the whole market or a particular player is doing things as a whole, that can make sense. For example, passive cooling on the PC market side of things should be standardized; Such standards should probably do something not unlike what Apple has done w/ MPX modules. Such specifications also would enable more powerful & passive cards to be made with particular types of cooling provided by the case standardized (i.e., the 2019 Mac Pro guarantees a flow from the front for the entire system).Alex.A - Saturday, February 8, 2020 - link
Have the 750Ti KalmX which looks identical to this one. Works without problems with a quite case fan.qap - Monday, February 10, 2020 - link
GTX 750 Ti version of this works very well in my PC. Completely quiet... Only vent is slow moving in PSU. I am seriously considering this one. On the other hand 7nm nvidia is coming and in sub 75W class it will be again unchalanged and probably much faster than this.Alistair - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
They released this after the 1650 was discontinued for the 1650 Super at the same price basically. Terrible.lmcd - Friday, February 7, 2020 - link
This isn't at all about price, it's about thermals. Shame you didn't try and figure that out before commenting.Alistair - Saturday, February 8, 2020 - link
Use a mobile 1650 super instead. Shame you didn't think before commenting. The 1650 was universally reviled as the worst of all the new GTX and RTX cards. You might as well use the old 1050 or 1050 ti then, if that is all you care about. The 1650 Super on the other hand is actually a good card. You can easily downclock any 1650 Super you buy to work fanless. Try the MSI Gaming one. Turn the fans off.Alistair - Saturday, February 8, 2020 - link
https://www.newegg.com/msi-geforce-gtx-1650-super-...BenSkywalker - Sunday, February 9, 2020 - link
Faster than a 780Ti, no external power and passively cooled, that is the point of this.People who go rabid fanboy mode over 8.37265% better performance per dollar aren't the target audience.
I wouldn't consider one for anything I can think of, but if someone asks me for a passively cooled card I don't have to point them to a 1050Ti anymore.