Everyone loves a fast graphics card, but we'd rather not have to spend big money on them. Less powerful GPUs also don't need big triple-fan coolers, yet the market for compact graphics cards receives little attention.
With this underserved market in mind, Asrock has unveiled the Intel Arc A380 Low Profile 6GB card. It's a typical A380 under the hood, being powered by the ACM-G11 GPU with 1,024 stream processors clocked at 2.0GHz and 6GB of GDDR6 memory. It's not a powerhouse of a card as you'd expect at this end of the market, but it's got some key characteristics and one curious one.
It's a low-profile card with a 75W total board power, which means it doesn't need external power, instead drawing it all from the PCIe slot. While I appreciate a capable low-profile card, I feel as though Asrock missed a trick because it still takes a dual slot.
Asrock will say that its 75W TDP necessitates the use of a dual-slot cooler, and I understand that point of view, but I've tested a few low-profile cards over the years, most recently the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6400. It's got a lower 53W TDP, but it also has a single-fan cooler hardly larger than a playing card, and doubling its area wouldn't be impossible, making it capable of handling a 75W TDP with ease.
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Having a dual-slot cooler isn't a deal breaker, but without access to cooling data, it does seem like it's overkill, which will keep it from being used in the most compact of systems—notably those with bespoke cases that might not even have the capacity for a dual-slot card
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