Looking for big graphics power without any noise? The folks at Techpowerup have just posted up an exclusive review on an all-passive HD 3870 SCS3 graphics card from PowerColor which may be exactly what you're after.

What's particularly surprising about this card is that not only can a passive heatsink keep it running cool, but it would appear that it's actually able to beat out the reference "active" cooling solution from AMD for temps, and by a significant amount at that.

Check out the full review of the card here folks.

PowerColor has been using the SCS3 cooling system on a number of products before. When the HD 3870 was released they soon started working on their implementation of a completely passive HD 3870. The final product is a blessing for all media PC owners or users who want to build a quiet PC. All other SCS3 cards use a cooler designed by Arctic Cooling, the HD 3870 SCS3 does not.

The card's clock speeds, memory configuration and PCB design are exactly the same as the AMD reference design. So the only change other than packaging of course is that the SCS3 cooler has been mounted instead of the AMD reference cooler.