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Comment by Patient0 | Hacker News Reader

The configurations that allow multiple 60Hz 4K monitors appear to depend on either having a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 or NVIDIA Quadro M4000 graphics cards.

But the NVidia GeForce GTX says it needs a 350W power supply [0]. The NVidia Quadro says it needs 120W and says it has a "Ultra-quiet active fansink" [1] ... i.e. quiet, but it still needs a fan.

Can anyone therefore confirm if the Airtops are completely passively cooled? Is it just the CPU that is passively cooled, or the graphics card too?

[0] http://www.evga.com/products/Specs/GPU.aspx?pn=567ece10-ff52...

[1] https://www.pny.com/nvidia-quadro-m4000?sku=VCQM4000-PB&type...

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It is entirely passively cooled. The GTX 950 has a thermal profile (TDP of 90W [0]. The 350W recommendation is for your entire system, it's not asking you to add 350W to the size of your current power supply. The Airtop can passively cool about 200W, so they put in a GPU at 90W TDP, and a CPU at 85W TDP

[0] http://www.anandtech.com/show/9547/nvidia-launches-geforce-g...

Awesome. I bought a NoFan from quietpc.com last year but I struggled to get a completely fanless setup capable of driving 4K at 60Hz (there was exactly one fanless card they offered which had displayPort 1.2).... Now though it looks like Airtop will be my next upgrade!

An ordinary GPU can be made fanless with an aftermarket cooler. The Arctic Accelero S3 will handle 135w TDP cards without a fan. That's sufficient to cool a GTX 1060. You will need a large case with plenty of ventilation.

https://www.arctic.ac/uk_en/accelero-s3.html

My next system is going to be an Airtop as well! I'll be in the market at the beginning of next year, so I'm hoping that they'll have a new model by then with the 1050 or 1060, and that they'll get one of the newer processors that packs more performance per watt.

Their video makes it look like they remove both the CPU and GPU default cooling and replace it with their case. So it wouldn't matter if NVidia says their card ships with a fan -- these folks rip that cooler off and replace it with their own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy3nhYPUd7I

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