Palit GTX 1650 KalmX 4GB Review – When and how well does passive cooling really work? | Laboratory test

1 - Einführung und Vorstellung 2 - Tear Down: Platine, Bestückung und Kühler 3 - Gaming Performance 1080p 4 - Leistungsaufnahme 5 - Taktrate, Temperaturen und Betriebsgeräusch 6 - Zusammenfassung und Fazit

Board design

Palit uses a simple 2-1 phase design on this almost tiny board, in which the 2 GPU phases (VDDCR_GFX) each control a control loop. This task is done by a small uP9510P from UPI Semiconductor, which directly controls the 2 voltage converter circuits. Each of the VDDCR control circuits has an Alpha & Omega SM4377 for the high-side and a MOSFET pair of two SM4503for the low-side. This is not the crown of evolution now, but at less than 70 watts it is easily feasible. This is then smoothed with a normal 220 nH coil.

The memory (MVDD) is supplied with a single phase and the DC/DC converter for this has been realized with a simple step-down chip in the form of a 7212 in the OEM package. The voltage converters are then an SM4377 on the high side and one on the low-side together with a 470 nH coil for smoothing. Samsung's four 1GB memory modules with 12 Gbps are then connected to this single phase. The 12-volt motherboard connection is not extra secured, but a smoothing coil with shunt for monitoring can of course be found.

On the back, apart from the PWM controller of the GPU, there are few active components, which include the voltage converters for various partial voltages and the BIOS chip.

Here is a summary of the most important components:

uP9510P UPI PWM Controller VDDCR_GFX	A&O SM4377 + 2x SM4503 High-/Low-Side VDDCR_GFX	Coil, 220 nH, VDDCR_GFX
A&O 2x SM4377, High-/Low-Side MVDD	Coil, 470 nH, MVDD	NCP45491 ON Semi, Power Monitoring
12V Rail, Filter and Shunt	EEPROM, Single BIOS	Samsung Memory, 1GB, 12Gbps

Cooler design

Here you can rely on a large lamella cooler with vertically arranged cooling fins with neat distance as well as two 6 mm heatpipes made of nickel-plated copper composite material. The GPU heatsink is made of copper and carries the back soldered heatpipes. A screwed-on, cirsequential light metal frame is used for mounting on the board and cooling the 4 RAM modules. The voltage converters and coils are each thermally connected to the radiator via a thermal guide pad. This is at least expedient, though not perfect.

The cooler towers over the top edge of the board and, together with the overhang at the end of the card, offers an even larger area for direct convection upwards, if the card is to be installed horizontally (and that should actually be the case).