Smallest TV Tuner yet tips up

GECUBE WAS ALL ABOUT interesting cooling solutions this year, that and Crossfire and the smallest TV card I have ever seen. The general cards are just that, high quality ATI cards with custom mostly copper heatsinks, and very little reference designs, a very good thing.

The first one that got our attention was an X700Pro model called the GC-RX700PGA-C3. This one, an AGP model, there is a PCIe version, was pretty much done from the ground up, and is about as close to a reference board as Ferrari is to a Lada. The first thing you notice is a large copper heatsink. Then, the sharp eyed among you will see they moved the fan to the left a bit to keep it off the hot spot of the GPU.

This leads to longer fan life, and cooler GPUs. A lot of components, most importantly power regulation parts need cool air if they aren't going to die an early death. You can see that GeCube clustered them at the top corner, and there are fan vents pointed directly at them. This is one well cooled card, even if it does not look like all that much.

The thing that made me really go 'wow' at GeCube was the GC-STK-TV, the smallest TV tuner I have seen at the show. It is the size of a memory stick, and it is positively dwarfed by the antenna plugged in to it. If you look at the size of the USB header or the pen next to it, you understand how small this is. This could be really handy for road warriors and businessmen. µ