Sparkle Intel Arc A310 ECO, 4GB GDDR6, 50W TBP, Short
Sparkle Intel Arc A310 ECO, 4GB GDDR6, 50W TBP, Short Bracket is Included, Low-Profile, Single Fan, Single Slot, HDMI x1, Mini DisplayPort x2, SA310C-4G
- Intel Arc A310 Chipset
- 4GB, 64-bit, GDDR6 memory, 15.5 Gbps graphics memory speed
- 1x HDMI 2.0, 2x mini-DP
- Xe HPG Architecture, Real Time Ray Tracing, Intel XeSS upscaling, 75W TDP, DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.3
- SPARKLE exclusive 50W TBP design, came with low-profile, single-fan with single-slot compact design. Free additional short bracket is included.
SPARKLE Intel Arc A310 ECO, 4GB GDDR6, 50W TBP, Short bracket is included, Low-Profile, Single Fan, Single Slot, HDMI x1, Mini DisplayPort x2, SA310C-4G
| SKU: | B0CSFJN835 |
| Weight: | 202 Grams |
| Dimensions: | 6.14"L x 2.72"W |
| Brand: | Sparkle Computer |
| Model: | SA310C-4G |
| Manufacture: | Sparkle |
From the manufacturer
Intel Arc A310
8K Ready
Supports the new generation of 8K video output, with 3x DisplayPort 2.0 and 1x HDMI 2.0, providing an ultimate visual experience.
| GPU Architecture | Alchemist |
| Xe Cores / XMX Engines | 6 / 96 |
| Render Slices | 2 |
| Ray Tracing Units | 6 |
| Graphics Clock | 1000 MHz |
| Memory Config | 4GB GDDR6 @ 15.5Gbps |
| Memory Interface | 64-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 124 GB/s |
| System Interface | PCIe Gen 4.0 x 8 |
| Power (TDP) | 50W |
| Video Output | 1x HDMI 2.0b, 2x mini-DisplayPort |
| Dimension | 156 x 69mm, Single-slot |
| Power Requirement | 350W or greater PSU |
| Power Connector | None – No need external power from PSU. |
I purchased this card primarily as a 4K HEVC media transcoding accelerator for jellyfin on Arch Linux.
The card is simultaneously tasked with providing a 4K KDE desktop for use as a media PC, mostly for web video playback in Chrome.
The card works flawlessly in both roles at once using the well supported i915 driver. Transcoding is being done through VA-API. Installation was click it in and screw it down. Setup was plug and play, with basically no configuration past installing the driver packages and pointing jellyfin at it. Highly capable product for this use case at a very attractive price (I paid $110US on December 29th, 2025).
Edit July 2nd 2026: The card has been moved to a new media PC with an iGPU. It is still responsible for jellyfin transcoding (and still doing a bang up job at it), but is no longer rendering the desktop simultaneously. The extra headroom has been allocated to the Lutris emulation frontend, configuring emulators to use the A310 as the render device with the i915 driver, and that’s worked wonderfully.
Low power, great for transcoding, needs a firmware update to fix fan surging issue.
I purchased this as a dedicated hardware transcoding GPU for a rack mount server, it requires no external power, fits in a 2U case, comes with both full size and low profile brackets, but swapping them requires a little creativity as the plastic shroud covers the upper screw. Installation is easy as no external power needs to be connected. Out of the box, the cards firmware contains a bug that causes the fan to constantly spin up for a few seconds, this is fixed by installing the Intel GPU drivers under Windows which also upgrades the firmware during install. After that, it runs quietly and fulfils that role perfectly and runs cool, the fan is barely noticeable, even at full chat.
While it was in a windows environment, I ran 3D Mark, being a 4GB card it’s clearly going to struggle, so had to drop to the basic benchmarking test, 3D Mark predicted FPS results on 1080 High:
Fortnight 180+
Battle Field V 55+
Apex Legends 110+
GTA V 145+,
Red Dead Redemption 2 35+
Obviously those are just guide numbers, but for a basic card at 1080p, it looks like Arc has some decent performance potential. It handles transcoding multiple streams with ease, unlike NVIDIA, no artificial session limit on transcodes, the only concern is 4GB VRAM, but that is more than enough for over a dozen H264/H265 transcodes from 1080 down to whatever. If you need more, then choose a card with extra VRAM.
Is it good value? That depends on your needs. For gaming at 1080, I would pay a little more and go Arc 570/580, at 1080 they are significantly more capable. If you just need to add a low power, quiet GPU for transcoding duties with AV1 support for the future, it’s the cheapest and arguably best option, also ideal if you stream and want to hardware encode in real time without hitting your main GPU’s resources.
From an integrated gpu to this gpu is a HUGE upgrade, but I just found out that my system doesn’t support rebar and no further bios updates that will support rebar. For other people out there, make sure your system supports rebar, and if not there will be a ~40% performance reduction on your gpu. Aside from that, I highly recommend this gpu as a budget gpu as it is very fast, low power consumption (I’m using 300w), great quality, very small, and they fix the problem with changing the normal bracket into a small factor form braket if anyone else wants to know. It’s also quiet and cool after updating to the right graphics driver…
This little card is the king of transcoding in small form factor PC’s. I set up a Truenas server for my daughter using an old Dell Optiplex 7010 SFF and at first tried an AMD WX4100 low profile card. That did work but performance left a lot to be desired. Then, I got this little gem and WOW, this this really shines. Very fast, very low power consumption and basically plug and play for Linux these days. You won’t do better for this use case. If you have a full size case, I would strongly recommend the Asrock Arc A380 instead. It’s a better card in every way.
Now for the problem – the fan. Intel and Sparkle left a glaring problem with the fan on this card. Out of the box, you get a terrible droning fan and as a bonus, the firmware constantly ramps the fan uuuupp and downnnn. It’s enough to make you lose your sanity.
I updated the firmware, which helped. That can be done in Linux command line but on Truenas Scale, it’s next to impossible due to how locked down it is. So, install it in a Windows PC or boot a Windows drive, install the Intel drivers and allow that to do it’s update. That will also install the latest firmware onto the card. Then, you can go back to Linux. However, the fan STILL ramps up and down, just a little bit less. OMG, it’s so annoying!
My final fix was to run powertop on the server (install powertop, run powertop –auto-tune, systemctl enable –now powertop). That seems to have sent the card into a state of stability and the fan is basically steady now. It’s still an annoying tone but at least it’s just ONE annoying tone.
If this issue was fixed, the card would be flawless for it’s usecase.
Small, compact, looks great, and works great.
its a 1/2 slot size so it was perfect for my jellyfin server. it transcodes pretty well and fast and at 4k. have had many different streamers off its hardware transcode and it does good. its quiet, and doesnt run hot even under load. 10/10 would recommend for any workstation or home work station.
I never tested this in game. Purchased the card explicitly to replace as 1050 Ti as a “Plex Media Accelerator” in a custom TrueNAS box. Features built-in HEVC, Quick Sync, and AV1 codec support. Sure, it’s only got 4GB of VRAM, but if you’re building a Plex/Enby/Jellyfin server or Adobe Premier Workstation without an iGPU, then this handily allows such a system to handle 4k streams and video transcodes with a minimum of stuttering. Comes with standard height and low-profile brackets for half-height standard mount cases.
The card seemed solid and has been humming along for almost a year now, no hiccups. Being that it’s in a server in a different room, I don’t hear it when it’s under load, but while testing I never heard the fans ramp with my workloads.
Card was $100 when I first saw it, I paid $120 for an open-box model when the AI RAMpocalypse started. For the increase in my servers ability to handle concurrent streams and higher end content and because it passes through without any issues in TrueNAS, it was worth the cost to me.
As a note, AM4 CPUs without iGPUs appear to support unbuffered ECC memory, dependant on motherboard & BIOS. A Ryzen 7 5800X AM4 with 64GB ECC could not handle a single 4K transcode without noticeable and frequent buffering, given a capable and validated network infrastructure + configuration. I tested with more or less a single use case + configuration, so take all this with a grain of salt.
This is a great little GPU. Want a power efficient system that will still let you game a little bit? Extremely portable pc with a dedicated GPU? Server and you just need to see the screen sometimes? A bit overkill, but this will do it.
Where this card really shines is for media servers or a dedicated streaming pc. My machine is both, and usd two of these for a time! You generally want low power use and low price, and the encoding capabilities of this little gpu are absolutely stellar. I have used it to game, I have used it to stream, and now I am building an incredibly small itx HTPC which I also intend to also use for some easy-to-run games to play with my family on or TV (stuff like golf with friends, the lego games, etc.) I have two of the a310 models, and there have been so many situations and builds which these have been very helpful with.
Noise levels were a concern when reading the reviews of others, and they aren’t as good as they could be, but honestly it is just not that bad IMO. I noticed it after opening the case up and trying to run some stress tests and heavier (for this gpu) games and what not. When I put the class panel back on my case, I completely forget about the noise.
TLDR; This is not a gaming card, but it’ll generally work on low settings in a pinch, and is great for trouble shooting and experimenting. This is a god tier little media server GPU though. Not the quietest when under heavy load, but could be worse.
I have two of these in a Dell R730 in the garage. I’m passing them through to Proxmox VMs. One is running Frigate with the Mobilenet v2 OpenVino detector and VAAPI-accelerated ffmpeg, the other is Plex. Both are working great.
A note for Plex: make sure you’ve installed the intel-media-va-driver-non-free package otherwise HDR tonemapping won’t work. If you want to upgrade the card firmware from within Linux go to ryanbarrie on Github and look for the arc-firmware-linux-how-to repository.
Good card for encoding or some games on low settings
This GPU is great for video encoding. I use it in a low power gaming PC. Been happy with its performance under a realistic load. Very low power draw so could be in a ITX PC or HTPC. Could run basic titles like Fortnite on low settings at 60 fps. Needs resizable bar so thats a consideration to take into account if thinking of buying. Keeps good temps, easy to install-comes with attachment for full size or ITX pc cases and solid quality.
perfect small videocard.
Looking for a good low profile videocard and wanted actually an Intel card, so this one is obvious surely for the price! a lot better than those ancient 730 videocards you see around for a lot more money..