Diamond Viper Radeon HD 3650 1GB

Diamond's Viper HD 3650 1GB is small and compact like most of the other models out there, unburdened by large heatsinks, fans, etc.  With its emphasis on price and low power consumption, the smaller footprint of this card makes it ripe for using in the close quarters of a SFF or other Home Theater oriented PC where high-res gaming is not a primary concern.

The front and back of the card is mostly left open - very little in the way of power regulation or other circuitry is visible.  Ruby appears to be relaxing a bit on the graphic label stickered over the rear-mounted heatsink/fan.  It's almost as if she was taking a breather from the typical strenous output she deals with in the upper end HD38xx models.  Quite noticeable is the lack of both CrossFire and power connectors, as this Radeon HD 3650's CrossFire and power is supplied by the PCI-Express slot.  

The heatsink and fan are quite small, mounted over the RV635 and the four memory chips located on the front.  As the HD 3650 consumes little power compared to some of the more powerful cards, it generates a lot less heat and doesn't need a heavy-duty solution.  Of course, the profile is quite slim and only requires a single slot in your chassis for installation.  Small thermal pads connect the heatsink to the memory ICs below.

The remaining four memory chips reside on the backside of the card, uncooled, surrounding a metal bracket used to hold down the heatsink.  The memory consists of Hynix DDR2, and is rated for 2.5ns operation at CAS settings of 6-6-6.  This is most definitely not the most expensive RAM floating around, and a perfect fit for Diamond when adding an entire gigabyte.  The bracket features three kinds of video connections: VGA, DVI, and HDMI.  These should cover almost all users current needs for connecting their PC to a monitor.