The Asus Radeon HD5450 Silent 512 MB DDR2 PCI-Express Graphics Card is a great low-cost upgrade to personal computer systems with an integrated graphics chipset and a low wattage power supply. It's definitely NOT for hardcore gamers that want the highest resolutions and the most demanding video setting, but it can run most of the popular titles currently available at a resolution of 1024 by 768 with medium to high graphic settings. What makes this card extremely attractive is it's low power requirement. Idle, the pull is about 7 watts, and loaded it pulls about 20 watts. That means that most off-the-shelf systems with a 220 to 250 watt power supply and a PCI-Express 16X slot should have no problem upgrading the integrated graphics to this card without having to replace the existing power supply. Even slim-line systems can use this card by converting the connection bracket to the low profile one included. The card really shines with HD video playback. Asus throws in some... Read more

I rated this card 3 stars only because of the difficulty I had installing the card. But once you get it installed, I would give it a 5 star rating ..... it's both quiet and low power. I would recommend reading the two 5 star reviews for this card, as they have useful information about this card. I had two significant problems installing the card, which I will discuss in the hope that others can avoid the problems I ran into.

1) With settings at 1920 x 1080, which is the native resolution of my flat panel display, the HDMI video output was scaled down to about 85% of full screen size. This graphics card has a manager application called Catalyst Control Center, and the version that was initially installed was 11.2. While the help information in Catalyst 11.2 mentioned a "scaling function" in Catalyst, no scaling function was actually present in Catalyst 11.2. As of this review, the latest version of Catalyst is 11.3, and I would strongly recommend downloading and... Read more

Bought this video card for my Shuttle SG33G5 that I'm using for my HTPC. Even with just a passive heat sink, the temperature has never gotten above 45C. The system fan at 800rpm produces enough airflow over the heatsink to keep it cool. If I increase the rpms to 1500 the temp only reaches 43C for fullscreen HD at 1920x1080 resolution. I was worried about how hot it would get, but I am very happy with the results. Setup was easy and the picture quality and sound from the HDMI port are great.