NVIDIA GF100 & Friends speculation
- Thread starter Arty
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No, by reading ISSCC papers.
David
PS: Would mindfury stop posting pictures. This is a forum, not a freaking photo gallery...
steveOrino
Regular
eh, whats the problem with posting the pictures? They are more relevant to the topic then a large percentage of the posts in this thread.
Besides, the thread moves so fast they are buried rather quickly anyway.
Besides, the thread moves so fast they are buried rather quickly anyway.
Yeah, but even they must have arrived at those numbers by some method. Would you care to specify how they came up with that number?
Jawed
Legend
The photos contain technical clues or raise technical questions.
e.g.
appears to indicate that GTX480's heatsink is one piece of metal moulded to be a tight fit not just to the graphics chip but the entire PCB! Additionally, rather than covering the heatsink in plastic as in say HD5870, to form a wind tunnel, this uses the heatsink's shape to form a substantial proportion of the wind tunnel plus it allows the card to radiate some heat into the space around the card, rather than being "insulated" by the plastic of a conventional cooler's wind tunnel.
Well, that's my interpretation, anyway.
Jawed
Add to that the corrugation to increase metal surface area and the thickness of the heatpipes and it is clear that nVIDIA has made great effort to make fermi run cool an quiet.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
Or alternately, the chip runs really hot and a massive heatsink and very powerful fan is required to cool the thing. I'm surprised that the heatsink need to be uncovered so a lot of heat/air is vented into the case instead of being vented outside. Obviously that was required to get enough cooling out of an already massive heatsink, and that explains the special Fermi cases designed with Nvidia to cool the card.
Uh, I'd be willing to bet the cover was taken off for the pictures. I'd be willing to bet that overall cooling would be harmed by taking the cover off (since the fan would no longer be blowing air across the entire heat sink).
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
Uh, I'd be willing to be there are pictures of the card with the cover still in place on this page and the previous one, showing that the top of the heatsink is completely exposed even with the shroud in place. I'd be willing to bet there will be a lot of heat radiated off the top of that card. I can't quite tell if there are vents in the top, or if it's just a honking big radiator on top of the vanes. There's certainly vents in the side.
Looks like a 92x38mm centrifugal unit with PWM control. Dense fin arrangement and 6mm heat pipes give a clue to TDP. Centrifugal fans are good at maintaining high static pressure through the shroud. No real reason for it to be overly loud, but that also depends on bearing type & heatsink efficiency. The 480 has an extruded HS top that fits through the shroud for additional dissipation, but it's likely just style over substance.
I'm more interested in the VRM design & layout. Surprised they've used this topology.
Aye!
Besides, I'm a sucker for hardware porn. That's one beautiful undressed graphics card I have to say! Clearly the most heavy-duty fansink seen so far on a retail cooler, and it actually approaches or perhaps even equals some of the phattest after-market/custom OEM coolers as well, like the Asus Matrix 5870. I'm not at all convinced this cooler makes Fermi "run cool and quiet". You only strap on something like this if you absolutely HAVE to. This is a damn battle-tank of a heatsink!
It's not one piece. You can't cast fins as thin as those. It's a die-cast base like we've seen for several years now (which might actually be a vapor chamber), with thin fins soldered to a copper heatspreader that mates to direct-contact heatpipes like seen with the fermi 470 pictures already. Then there's another die-cast top plate soldered or perhaps simply glued on top of the fins... The top plate could possibly be metallized plastic also, but it looks metal-y to me at least in those pics.
It's gotta be dang heavy for a single-GPU gfx card, that's for sure.
Yes, it's really clever!
I wonder why this hasn't been done before (probably because it simply hasn't been neccessary until now!) Just don't reach inside your PC while the GPU is working... You don't want to brush your hands up to a 70+C metal surface! So, more pics, please! More, more!
I suspect BZB was waxing negative about the lack of a plastic shroud over the heatsink, not the plastic bit around the fan that was removed for the photo shoot. The heatsink definitely looks robust which is fine but of all things that could be wrong with a graphics card a loud fan is near the top of my list.
Yes, it's really clever!
I smell a lawsuit. Jackpot!
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
I was just pointing out that you don't put a massive heatsink and fast fan on something that runs cool. You only need it for something that runs hot, so to say "it must run cool and quiet because they put a massive heatsink on it" may not be the case at all.
Nowadays, any graphics card that doesn't vent most of the hot air outside the case is putting additional heat into the case, and will require extra cooling, which equals extra noise.
aaronspink
Veteran
Previous data points to a 1.9A fan which is quite beefy. If that current rating is true, it puts the blower in the 60-70 db range at full power which is anything but not very very loud.
aaronspink
Veteran
Yes, it's really clever!
Cost likely. You have to die cast the top in addition to all the other parts and then take a separate manufacturing step to bond the die cast part to the finished crimped fin structure likely using a thermal epoxy. And it likely doesn't provide that much additional dissipation because of the heat path through the thin Alu fins L junction is probably pretty poor. The L junctions are primarily a structure/wind tunnel element of the design and aren't engineered for thermal efficiency.
The whole thing is likely pretty pricey esp with the number of different length fins which also adds to manufacturing cost (tooling, tracking, assembly, etc). It certainly gives the appearance that the card is producing a pretty significant amount of heat.
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