Monday, May 18th 2020

Asetek Unveils Rad Card Industry's First Slot-In PCIe Radiator Card

Asetek, the creator of the all-in-one (AIO) liquid cooler and the global leader in liquid cooling solutions for gaming PCs and DIY enthusiasts, today announced its Rad Card GPU Cooler, bringing liquid cooled GPUs to space constrained PC cases. Asetek's Rad Card GPU Cooler, the industry's first slot-in PCIe radiator card, is first available in Dell-Alienware's newly introduced Alienware Aurora R11 PC.

Space concerns are a real issue for PC manufacturers, leaving GPU air cooling as the only option, until now. Asetek took this challenge head-on, innovating a new approach to radiator technology that reimagines the shape and location of the radiator. The Asetek Rad Card GPU Cooler fits into your motherboard's PCIe slot, just like any other add-in card. By utilizing PCIe slots, Asetek has defined a way to overcome PC manufacturers' dilemma of finding additional space inside the case for a liquid cooled GPU heat exchanger (HEx).

Update May 18th: This card may not be limited to just OEMs with Asetek tweeting "Not all of them made it to Alienware. Not what to do with these...". Asetek is very open about seeking feedback and is watching demand for this product from consumers, possibly even getting ready for a giveaway so it will be exciting to see what comes from this.
The unique design of Asetek's Rad Card GPU Cooler provides numerous benefits:
  • Space: Rad Card enables a liquid cooled GPU in a chassis where space is constrained, while leaving room for a liquid cooled CPU in the same case.
  • Performance: In space constrained PC cases, Rad Card provides superior cooling over an air-cooled GPU, ensuring GPU stability and limiting thermal throttling.
  • Aesthetics: Rad Card eliminates the hassle and clutter of tube routing for a clean and sparse system environment.
"When Alienware approached us to develop a solution to enable GPU cooling in space constrained cases, we were up for the challenge," said John Hamill, Chief Operating Officer at Asetek. "The result is a completely redesigned approach to GPU cooling."
Sources: Asetek, @Asetek
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59 Comments on Asetek Unveils Rad Card Industry's First Slot-In PCIe Radiator Card

#1
Rowsol
That's smart. It combines the fan and rad and even has the slot to provide power to the pump, assuming there is one? It looks like it's connected directly to the graphics card.
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#2
Unregistered
If they need testers for various other cases I'm available.
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#3
Caring1
It's still going to run hotter than a decent air cooled card, and now it has two blower style fans to add noise to the system.
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#4
Chaitanya
Thermaltake and Cooler Master GPU AIO from over a decade back came with PCI Slot radiators.
Posted on Reply
#5
dicktracy
How much you wanna bet a 4 slot aircooler with 2x 120x25mm fans will smoke this

How much you wanna bet a 4 slot aircooler with 2x 120x25mm fans will smoke this. Oh wait this thing 5 slotted due to the tubings... so versus 2x Delta fans hahaha!
Posted on Reply
#6
zo0lykas
People was talk the same about aio 10 years ago, waste of space not effective, expensive, water with electricity.. And bla bla bla..

Look today where is cpu colliers air cooler and aio.
dicktracyHow much you wanna bet a 4 slot aircooler with 2x 120x25mm fans will smoke this

How much you wanna bet a 4 slot aircooler with 2x 120x25mm fans will smoke this. Oh wait this thing 5 slotted due to the tubings... so versus 2x Delta fans hahaha!
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#7
Haile Selassie
Industry first my ass. This was done by Sapphire over 14 years ago. Some companies really have no shame when it comes to lying in customers faces. This is borderline stealing.

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#8
jeremyshaw
Haile SelassieIndustry first my ass. This was done by Sapphire over 14 years ago. Some companies really have no shame when it comes to lying in customers faces. This is borderline stealing.

Sapphire is unlikely to have been the actual ODM, anyways. Most in the industry relied on 2-3 different water cooling ODMs, of which Asetek is one. In this case, Asetek was contracted by Alienware to make this.

Either way, they were all already beat to the punch by the www.techpowerup.com/review/thermaltake-tide-water/
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#10
Ubersonic
Haile SelassieIndustry first my ass. This was done by Sapphire over 14 years ago.
In fairness here, Sapphire may have had the idea before Asetek (tho iirc Thermaltake was the oem for sapphires design) however it was more of a failed concept than a functional product. It was rated for 120w and it's radiator was essentially just a regular heatsink with the coolant piped through the heatpipes.

Giving Sapphire credit for the concept is one thing but saying Aseteks design is a ripoff of theirs is like saying the occulus quest is a ripoff of the virtual boy.
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#11
TheLostSwede
News Editor
Sorry, but this is really crap design. It wastes PCIe slots for a starter, which is a no go.
This is also going to be worse than a regular radiator to get rid of the heat and that blower fan, just urgh...
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#12
ppn
What they should really do is a 3 slot water cooling shroud replacement for the stock cooling with everything integrated into it, no visible pipes, pump, radiators, replacement backplate exhaust for all the airflow.
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#13
AnarchoPrimitiv
They should just combine them I to one so that now we have 4/4-1/2 slot Videocards... Sounds like something Zotac would be willing to do, their cards are approaching the size of an mITX chassis.
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#14
PLAfiller
I dig the aesthetics. But it may actually be pretty cool, no pun intended :).

@ppn makes sense, but my first thought is weight. I mean how much you can strap on that GPU's PCB? Radiator, pump, separate VRM cooling, actual fan, etc, etc. Gonna be a pretty hefty load on that four screws.
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#15
FreedomEclipse
~Technological Technocrat~
The Aurora R10 was known to run hot. Will be interesting to see if this makes any difference
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#16
zlobby
Haile SelassieIndustry first my ass. This was done by Sapphire over 14 years ago. Some companies really have no shame when it comes to lying in customers faces. This is borderline stealing.

Big up!
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#17
Jism
TheLostSwedeSorry, but this is really crap design. It wastes PCIe slots for a starter, which is a no go.
This is also going to be worse than a regular radiator to get rid of the heat and that blower fan, just urgh...
Bullshit. In the 90's we had filled up every possible PCI slot that you could imagine. Videocard, sound, modem, NIC and perhaps a SCSI/IDE controller. These days everything is integrated into the motherboard. NVME, S-ata, Sound, NIC, you name it. There's alot of unused slots to be precise. For a gamer system this would be the most ideal sollution to have a portable, swappable watercooler for your GPU, as there are barely AIO GPU coolers these days.

The products that we had 10+ years ago woud'nt fit properly these days on "newer" cards, and their cooling capacity does'nt even come close to today's standards. If you have a properly vented case, really the heat is'nt a problem. Water takes heat away faster and more efficient then a huge copper/alu air cooled block would do.



Here's my answer to stuffing op a AIO CPU cooler onto a GPU.
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#18
Valantar
Regardless whether this is technically a new idea or not, it's an interesting product - and one that for once actually makes the most of the positive attributes of radial fans (specifically high static pressure, allowing for very thick radiators). A narrow and (very) thick radiator should be a dream scenario for a radial fan after all. Though I would want to take it apart for more ... creative installations.
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#19
Dracius
I suppose they forgot about this too..



But happy to see that another attempt is being made at this type of device. :)

I'm interested to see how they address VRM cooling within that fan housing/shroud.
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#20
Chrispy_
This product is basically an admission that ATX motherboards are pointless and that nobody really needs the slots below the graphics card.
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#21
Jism
Well i bet you still would have space to install a card like this. There's plenty of slots the majority woud'nt use even with a NIC/wireless/soundcard in that. They dont need a full double sized slot. And if that does'nt fit or work out i bet you still could put it in a different way, or use a PCI-E riser to put your card somewhere else.
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#22
Chrispy_
TheLostSwedeAh yes, a self important buffoon that thinks his way is the only way people use computers :rolleyes:
Good luck to you and welcome to my ignore list.


Again, nobody might be you, but a lot of here have multiple add-in cards in our systems. I have a 10Gbps Ethernet card and that needs a x4 interface, so no, you can't make these kind of claims. Plenty of people here also use sound cards, Wi-Fi cards and what not, so it's simply not true that no-one uses expansion slots any more.
I'm generalising - My machine actually has three PCIe cards in it (One for the Vive Pro and one for a 2.5G NIC)
I'm not "most people" though. That would be my media center PC which is the standard single card like almost every prebuilt and PC build-guide out there.
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#24
ZoneDymo
UbersonicIn fairness here, Sapphire may have had the idea before Asetek (tho iirc Thermaltake was the oem for sapphires design) however it was more of a failed concept than a functional product. It was rated for 120w and it's radiator was essentially just a regular heatsink with the coolant piped through the heatpipes.

Giving Sapphire credit for the concept is one thing but saying Aseteks design is a ripoff of theirs is like saying the occulus quest is a ripoff of the virtual boy.
Its not about calling anything a "ripoff", the problem is Asetek claiming an "industry's first".
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#25
Cranky5150
That thing looks like a shite hole covered with a dumpster fire TBH.....it's probably not going to cool worth a damn either..
Posted on Reply
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