Sapphire Radeon HD 5670 1GB Ultimate GPU review - Graphics - HEXUS.net

Usage

Installing the Sapphire Ultimate on top of an ASUS P7P55D Premium motherboard and into a Corsair Obsidian 700D chassis shows just how close the finned section, which protrudes upwards, comes to fouling an Arctic Cooling Freezer Extreme CPU heatsink.

The lack of room between graphics card and CPU cooler could impact upon thermal performance in smaller chassis. Notwithstanding the close proximity of the two coolers, results from the passively-cooled card are encouraging.

Leaving the 700D chassis' three large fans spinning and keeping the side-panel on, the Ultimate's heatsink does a good job in pushing away the heat. The FurMark load-testing results show that it takes over 10 minutes for the GPU to hit a maximum temperature of 73°C - well within thermal tolerances - which is all the more impressive considering the 24.5°C ambient temperature.

Moving the card down to the bottom PCIe x16 mechanical slot results in an under-load temp of 71°C. Indeed, the temperatures are only 8°C worse than Sapphire's own fan-cooled model.