AMD and Celsia Technologies Collaborate on a New GPU Cooling Solution

[malware]

AMD and Celsia Technologies announced today a strategic partnership in which Celsia may become the cooling system manufacturer for ATI's next generation video cards. For now both companies are working on a vapor chamber based cooling solution for high end graphics cards and that's all we have. The cooling module includes Celsia's patented NanoSpreader that "significantly outperforms competing heat pipe based solutions." A NanoSpreader is a patented copper encased two-phase vapor chamber into which pure water is vacuum sealed. The liquid is absorbed by a copper-mesh wick and passed as vapor through a micro-perforated copper sheet where it cools and returns as liquid to the wick. NanoSpreaders are half the weight of solid copper, and yet they perform 14% better than heat pipes.
"Working with AMD, we were able to meet all of the design criteria for a new GPU cooler. Namely, it had to be lighter, perform better and be lower cost than the current heat pipe based design," said Joe Formichelli, Celsia's CEO. "Unlike thermal modules using heat pipes, our two-phase NanoSpreader comes in direct contact with the heat source whereby removing costly, heavy base plates."
As part of AMD's technology development project, Celsia has been invited to present at the 2008 AMD Technical Forum and Exposition tomorrow in Taiwan. Additionally, a short video explaining Celsia's NanoSpreader vapor chamber technology will be shown as part of the conference's opening presentation.



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[wahdangun]

"it had to be lighter, perform better and be lower cost than the current heat pipe based design"
then if that true, maybe next generation gpu from AMD will break 1 Ghz barier. ah that was overclocker dream.

maybe 4Ghz denebFX can be posible with that technology

 

[tkpenalty]

"it had to be lighter, perform better and be lower cost than the current heat pipe based design"
then if that true, maybe next generation gpu from AMD will break 1 Ghz barier. ah that was overclocker dream.

maybe 4Ghz denebFX can be posible with that technology

Uh since when did CPUs come into play? They're talking about GPUs here.

Vapor chambers are nothing new, but sapphire have proved their effectiveness. They are basically a very wide version of a heatpipe, and they work in a similar manner. Its just that in this case the vapor chamber can be utilised better. From what I understand they are doing like HDT; the core of the GPU will be touching the vapor chamber.

Mem cooling will be good as well if they go ahead with this. Hmm... single slot 4850/4870/new 5xxx cards that run cool and quiet anyone?

 

[DarkMatter]

Dunno, it seems expensive and 14% is not much of an improvement, especially when this is an announcement claim (it's a norm that the actual products end up performing 50% of claims, if lucky). Bear in mind that "it had to be lighter, perform better and be lower cost than the current heat pipe based design" is their goal, they say nowhere they achieved anything and we have yet to see if it works in the end. I always work with precedents in mind, and as I see it, this is similar to what Vapochill tried in the CPU arena (though different) with very mixed results. They do seem to perform better, but are much more expensive for what you get in return. Almost always hetpipe coolers are better for the money and in Vapochill's theories their design should have been lighter, perform better and be cheaper to produce. But that was in theory.

Now I'm not saying this will fail, but they seem to be following the same path and I don't think Vapochill did a bad work, so if they want to improve uppon that technology they will have to excell IMHO, and that's not easy.

On the other hand it could be worth it if only for the weight reduction.

 

[WarEagleAU]

Im hoping they take this and apply it to cpu coolers as well.

 

[DarkMatter]

Im hoping they take this and apply it to cpu coolers as well.

As I said this is similar to what Vapochill did, with one exception: on GPU's you have much more area to spread your cooler. IMHO that's the main difference between this and Vapochill's designs, where they were forced to use heatpipes due to small space.

 

[jbunch07]

Nice! Cant wait to see it in action.

 

[Exavier]

I wanted the vapochiller they showed off at the same time as that huge tec chiller...can't remember names
but yeah, anything that improves on the X2 stock cooler = win win situation, I'd pay £15~ more for that.

 

[brian.ca]

Dunno, it seems expensive and 14% is not much of an improvement, especially when this is an announcement claim (it's a norm that the actual products end up performing 50% of claims, if lucky). Bear in mind that "it had to be lighter, perform better and be lower cost than the current heat pipe based design" is their goal, they say nowhere they achieved anything and we have yet to see if it works in the end.

"Working with AMD, we were able to meet all of the design criteria for a new GPU cooler. Namely, it had to be lighter, perform better and be lower cost than the current heat pipe based design,"

Isn't that quote essentially saying we were able to meet all the design criteria set out for a new cooler, and these were.... ie: they were actually able to make a lighter, cheaper and better performing cooler?

Also, I'm not familiar with the Vapochill tech you were talking about but from what I'm seeing after a quick google search of it I'm not sure why you would compare it to that instead of the sapphire cards which seem to work on the exact same premise. (see http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...hire-hd3870-512mb-toxic-edition-review-6.html)

I'd agree it's best to see it in action before putting too much stock into it but looking quickly at that review it seems pretty promising (http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/skymtl/GPU/SAPPHIRE-TOXIC/TOXIC-44.jpg)

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

just seeing this, i welcome this, hope it means good cheap single slot coolers.

 

[DarkMatter]

Isn't that quote essentially saying we were able to meet all the design criteria set out for a new cooler, and these were.... ie: they were actually able to make a lighter, cheaper and better performing cooler?

Hmm could be. Being that english is not my language, I understood that sentence more like this: Working with AMD, we agreed with the design for the new GPU cooler. Namely it had to be...

Also, I'm not familiar with the Vapochill tech you were talking about but from what I'm seeing after a quick google search of it I'm not sure why you would compare it to that instead of the sapphire cards which seem to work on the exact same premise. (see http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...hire-hd3870-512mb-toxic-edition-review-6.html)

I'd agree it's best to see it in action before putting too much stock into it but looking quickly at that review it seems pretty promising (http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/skymtl/GPU/SAPPHIRE-TOXIC/TOXIC-44.jpg)

As I said, I think it's the exact same tech, but because around the CPU you don't have so much space they had to use tubes to increase the surface area to higher heights. Shapire TOXIC card's cooler does seem to work in the same way as this Celsia's design (I didn't know that this morning, though I did read the same article you linked soon after my posts), but IMO that's hardly a good sign. Shaphire's TOXIC coolers althogh much better than the stock cooler, are not better than many "cheap" aftermarket coolers and not even cheaper IMO, taking into account that many other Ati cards with Zalman, TR and other coolers are both cheaper and run cooler. Indeed TOXIC coolers show exactly what I said, because you have many heatpipe coolers that seem to do the same for less (and without heatpipes like Zalman VF700). If you read the entire article they do say that the TOXIC cooler has a much bigger surface area and that it is much better organized that the stock one and has many fins the stock one completely lacks. Probably only improving that in the stock cooler you would get almost the same temps, meaning that the Vapor-X technology was really doing very few to help.

Of course we have to wait and see what happens, but I have my doubts on this, because the known precedents are not very promising.

 

[panchoman]

looks awesome, but it is more promising then sapphire's vapro system..

 

[ShadowFold]

I hope they still have fans on these. I mean I trust that its good for stock but I bet this could get some crazy overclocks!

 

[DarkMatter]

I hope they still have fans on these. I mean I trust that its good for stock but I bet this could get some crazy overclocks!

Sure they will have. AFAIK this only improves the thermal conductivity INSIDE the cooler, you still have to take it out from there somehow.

 

[AphexDreamer]

On there site they say "Up to 30% better performance than heat pipes" which is it?

 

[DarkMatter]

On there site they say "Up to 30% better performance than heat pipes" which is it?

I dunno. Though I have just realised they are comparing their tech to normal heatpipes (in their site) and not the newer flattened heatpipes with direct contact with the chip, which have shown to be a big improvement over normal heatpipes. Might be 14% compared to those new ones?

 

[panchoman]

Sure they will have. AFAIK this only improves the thermal conductivity INSIDE the cooler, you still have to take it out from there somehow.

yup, thats true