Updating the GPU has always been a challenges for anyone with an older PC that might be short on space or that suffers from a power supply without a lot of extra energy to spare. In the past, most decent GPUs required more space or power than their PCs could easily provide.
That is now changing. Both AMD and Nvidia released low-power GPUs that provide decent-to-good performance but that can draw power from the PCIe bus rather than require extra power supply connections. Now, HIS has announced a new AMD R9 460 card that is also incredibly thin, as Hexus.net reports.
The HIS RX 460 Slim-iCooler OC 4GB is an RX 460 variant that comes in a single-slot configuration that uses a 50mm 0dB profile fan. That allows the PCIe x8 card to fit into smaller chassis such as those utilized in portable gaming PCs. The slim form factor is enabled by HIS’s iCooler technology that utilizes a very slim 50mm fan.
Like other RX 460 GPUs, the HIS model requires only 75W, allowing it to draw power from the PCIe bus without needing a six-pin power connector. The low power draw should make it well suited to older systems that have smaller power supplies. Even so, the RX 460 has 14 compute units, 896 stream processors, and a high enough clock rate that makes it able to push 2.2 teraflops of performance for good performance at moderate resolutions in modern games.
The RX 460 Slim-iCooler OC 4GB is also a very silent GPU. The fan is completely silent up until 60 degrees Celcius, at which point it fires up and turns back off when the GPU hits 50 degrees. The fan won’t exceed 28dB in what HIS calls “2D mode,” even though the 1200MHz card is very mildly overclocked to 1220MHz.
HIS has not yet announced pricing or availability for the card. However, more details can be found on the company’s website. Whenever it arrives, the RX 460 Slim-iCooler OC 4GB, with product code HS-460R4TCNR, should offer a significant upgrade for the space-and-power underprivileged.
