Friday, January 12th 2024
Cooler Master Demos Prototype "Project VGA Cooler" at CES
Cooler Master's research and design team seems to be up to all sorts of shenanigans lately—company representatives at CES 2024 had the joyful experience of hyping up a curiosity/prototype bearing the moniker "Project VGA Cooler." It certainly is a tough sell to explain to punters how an aftermarket part can usurp the performance offered by a manufacturer's standard fitting of triple-fan arrays on already pricey custom high-end GeForce RTX 40xx cards. The plucky Project VGA Cooler was showcased in white or dark silver forms, accompanied by twin Mobius 120 mm fans. The spec sheet states that these utilize special loop dynamic bearings, although we are not certain whether the special Mobius fans are customized for this project specifically.
TPU staff witnessed an ASUS GeForce RTX 4090 TUF graphics card getting the refit treatment—its original triple-fan array was removed, and the experimental aftermarket part was attached to the TUF's remaining heatsink and shroud. Cooler Master's demonstration proceeded smoothly, but this publication questions whether these prototype GPU cooling units are truly prepared for a universal fit across a wide variety of expensive current generation GeForce RTX models, or Radeon RX equivalents. Cooler Master's design team likely has to be careful in choosing specific or popular GPU models, once "Project VGA Cooler" exits the conceptual phase of development and approaches final retail form.
Sources:
Tom's Hardware, VideoCardz, Wccftech
TPU staff witnessed an ASUS GeForce RTX 4090 TUF graphics card getting the refit treatment—its original triple-fan array was removed, and the experimental aftermarket part was attached to the TUF's remaining heatsink and shroud. Cooler Master's demonstration proceeded smoothly, but this publication questions whether these prototype GPU cooling units are truly prepared for a universal fit across a wide variety of expensive current generation GeForce RTX models, or Radeon RX equivalents. Cooler Master's design team likely has to be careful in choosing specific or popular GPU models, once "Project VGA Cooler" exits the conceptual phase of development and approaches final retail form.
9 Comments on Cooler Master Demos Prototype "Project VGA Cooler" at CES
msi 7970 bare heatsink is a good example to mod
Yep, that's gonna be a tough sell for sure, except to the "moar money than brains" crowd, hehehe :)
All for what $150 ? Shenanigans indeed....
Moreso if they engineer a good universal GPU cooler finstack that accepts 120s and adds the shroud both for some performance and aesthetic reasons.
I think it could be fun for the modding community also! (Paint it, airbrush it, wallah!)
Also with WC companies straying away from water blocks for AMD and middle level cards, this could be an alternative. Sure you won't get the same temps, but if they're improved... a great option none the less!
I hope they launch it and this isn't some BS marketing porotype that will never see the light of day!