Aug 2, 2011 07:24 GMT  ·  By

The number of passively cooled mainstream graphics cards has steadily declined over the years, so Asus has recently announced such a solution based on the Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 design, which is meant to capture the attention of those users wanting to build a dead silent desktop system.

Asus' creation will use the company's trademark DirectCU cooling system which relies on two direct contact heatpipes to draw the heat away from the GPU and into an aluminum heatsink.

This takes two PCI slots inside the system case and even protrudes beyond the margins of the printed circuit board.

Speaking of which, Asus has redesigned the PCB to make it shorter and to decrease the power consumption of its graphics card, which can now function without requiring any additional power outside of the 75W provided by the PCI Express slot.

In order to achieve this feat, Asus had to lower the operating frequencies of the ENGTS450 DC as the GPU is now clocked at 594MHz, while the 1GB of DDR3 memory works at 800MHz (1600MHz data rate).

In comparison, the standard version of the GTS 450 comes with a 783MHz core clock and with 1GB of GDDR5 memory that is running at 902MHz (3.608GHz data rate).

Taking a look at the difference in clock speeds, it becomes apparent that Asus' solution will lag behind most other GTS 450's available on the market right now, so this graphics card can only be recommended to those users who value silence above everything else.

Asus' passively cooled GTS 450 comes with all the usual video outputs, including dual-link DVI, HDMI and D-Sub.

The Taiwanese hardware maker has already started shipping the ENGTS450 DC towards its distributors and prices should start at approximately SEK 999 including VAT, which translates into roughly $126 without taxes.

The GTS 450 is built on Nvidia's GF106 core and it packs 192 stream processors, 32 texture units, 16 ROP units, and a 128-bit wide memory bus. (via SweClockers)