Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 Video Card Review :: Card

Card

Top view

I/O up view

PCI Express

The first cool thing about this card is that it is a 1/2 height video card. What this means is it will easily fit inside a low profile case like those that many Home Theater PCs use. Installation on a low profile case requires the replacement of the I/O bracket, and two ½ height brackets are included to facilitate this. Home Theater PCs are not likely to want noisy fans on their new cards and the HD 5450 is a passively cooled card.

Rear of card

Capacitors

Part Number

Memory)

The heatsink on the card covers the graphics chip and most of the card to cool the graphics chip. ATI’s chip is the smallest member of their Evergreen family dissipates the least heat and draws the least power of any of the 5 series chips. No extra power is required for the HD 5450 as it draws a minimum of power to the card. The low power draw and the low profile make it a great fit for HTPCs that have limited space and power.

1 slot

Bottom up view

Top I/O View

I/O

The bracket is rather different in that the top connector is a VGA connector, followed by a DisplayPort connector and a DVI-I connector. Most video cards with three monitor connections would use DVI+VGA+HDMI or some combination of the three. With Eyefinity, DisplayPort is required to use three monitors at one time, and as the card is a value card targeted at the $50 USD price range, the inclusion of a VGA port is not a hindrance.