Tuesday, July 1st 2014
Asetek Allowed US Patent Claims on Graphics Liquid Cooling
Asetek, the world's leading supplier of computer liquid cooling solutions, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has allowed a patent on the company's thermal interposer liquid cooling system designed for cooling graphic processing units (GPUs). Liquid cooling the GPU enables lower noise, lower temperatures, and enhanced performance over traditional air cooling.
"As seen in the recently announced AMD Radeon R9 295X2, the graphics cooling market is one that we see as having tremendous growth potential for our desktop business," said André Sloth Eriksen, Founder and CEO of Asetek. "We continue to see increasing interest from GPU and graphics card manufacturers due to increased power use and demands for lower acoustics. Given this interest, it is possible that the GPU cooling business could rival our CPU cooling business in the coming years."
Asetek has been developing liquid cooling solutions for graphics cards for more than 10 years using their patented sealed all-in-one liquid cooling technology. Factory filled and sealed for maximum reliability and ease-of-use, Asetek's liquid coolers have been thoroughly tested and certified to operate without maintenance for over 50,000 hours.
"As seen in the recently announced AMD Radeon R9 295X2, the graphics cooling market is one that we see as having tremendous growth potential for our desktop business," said André Sloth Eriksen, Founder and CEO of Asetek. "We continue to see increasing interest from GPU and graphics card manufacturers due to increased power use and demands for lower acoustics. Given this interest, it is possible that the GPU cooling business could rival our CPU cooling business in the coming years."
18 Comments on Asetek Allowed US Patent Claims on Graphics Liquid Cooling
Swifttech was a terrible thing to lose, but this is altogether ridiculous.
Maybe next they'll patent a heatsink.
If you dislike this then spam the crap out of them on their social media and most importantly don't buy their products or products which are made by them and rebranded (many AIO units).
arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/how-amazon-got-a-patent-on-white-background-photography/
I already have blocks and backplates for my two GTX-680s, so I'm good for now. If I need any in the future, I hope that they're available (grey market anyone?) at the time.
I hate monopolies because they always mean higher prices and compromised quality.
Real competition is key to a healthy market. The only losers are companies that don't innovate and sell for a fair price.
BTW, patent number is US8274787 B2. Notice the publication date? Yes, 25 Sep 2012... I'm no expert but this might mean that it was in fact contested and just until now it was granted.
This is a very unique design and opens the door to using the same cold plate on different cards. This would also make it very easy to remove the GPU cards after unbolting the cold plate.
But I don't like the idea of a "blanket" patent that would shut down their competition.