How many watts can a single-slot GPU heatsink dissipate? \ VOGONS

How many watts can a single-slot GPU heatsink dissipate?

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First post, by maximus

Posted on 2017-06-14, 18:47

maximus Offline

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Joined: 2013-12-14, 08:52
Location: SC, USA

I have some passively-cooled video cards in my collection:

Voodoo3 3000
GeForce4 MX420
Quadro4 100NVS
GeForce FX 5200
GeForce 6200
Radeon 9550

All of these cards have single-slot heatsinks of about the same size, though the newer cards' heatsinks are a bit larger.

It's hard to find precise power consumption figures for low-end cards like these. What's the maximum TDP for a card with a single-slot passive cooler?

More to the point: am I safe in assuming all these cards have about the same TDP, or is it possible that the GeForce 6200 uses two or three times as much power as the GeForce4 MX420?

I would test this myself, but I don't have a power meter.

PCGames9505

Reply 1 of 1, by agent_x007

Posted on 2017-06-15, 07:35

agent_x007 Offline

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Joined: 2016-01-19, 11:06

Maximum power consumption for those cards is slot dependant :
PCI-e x16 (electrical), is 75W max.
AGP 3.0 x8 is ~40W max (low quality Motherboard components can present a limit before that).
PCI 2.2 is 25W max. (source : LINK, page 157)

You can't determine TDP based on heatsink, because passive heatsinks are designed to dessipate a LOT more than card actually produces (in theory).
Temperature of passive heatsink is 100% dependant on case Airflow and Ambient temp inside it.
You can't "guess" a TDP based on temperature that heatsink reaches.
But if you could mount the same heatsink on all cards, you could tell which one has highest TDP and is it too much for that heatsink to handle.

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