I’m interested in using a fanless gpu with my soon-to-be delivered HoneyComb.
I note that HoneyComb / ClearFog CX Installation and Tips | SolidRun mentions the AMD RX550 2GB was “briefly tested” with the LX2160. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find any fanless variants of the RX550. Is there a well-supported and/or similar AMD model that I can use on the HoneyComb?
there are some passive variants of Polaris based Radeon cards, however they can be hard to come by at this point. Recent kernel’s have enabled “silent” mode for Polaris chipset cards which disables the fan up until a certain temperator and/or power draw. There are also OSS utilities that allow you to control the fan curve of your Radeon gpus.
Do I understand correctly that any Polaris-based Radeon model would be well-supported? I note that this is not the first time you’ve mentioned AMD’s Polaris architecture in the forums. Is Polaris inherently better for systems built around the LX2160?
Generally AMD’s Polaris lineup of GPUs are a good fit for the the HoneyComb. First their power consumption is more inline with a HoneyComb build, secondly they have very good upstream support. Most the HoneyComb users that are using their machine for a desktop are using Polaris based cards, so there is also very good community support. One community member did do a bringup on a Navi based card, but the lowest powered option runs at twice the power consumption of the LX2160a at idle.
Additionally there are a number of community members that use Nvidia GTX 7xx based cards. They have recently received clock support so run decently, but are not as well supported as AMD’s options. Anything newer than the 7xx series have only basic support with OSS drivers and therefore run, but very slowly.
Thank you very much for your explanation. I’m successfully sold on the AMD Radeon Polaris and will purchase accordingly. If I must decide between a Polaris chip and a fanless heatsink, I’ll go with the former.