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Gigabyte's Silent Cell GPU Cooling Promises Huge Temp Drops
During our meeting with Gigabyte at Computex, the company brought up their brand-new "Silent Cell" cooling technology which aims to beat out any other passive GPU cooler on the market. Pretty bold claims, but given that the company asked me if I'd be interested in doing a comparison in our labs, I'd have to say they are taking them pretty seriously.
Silent Cell is the company's latest technology for passive cooling. The first such technology was released in 2004 and was named Silent-Pipe. That was followed-up with Silent-Pipe II in 2005, Silent-Pipe 3 in 2007 and Multi-Core Cooling in 2008. With GPUs hotter than ever, it makes sense that the company would only continue to innovate in this area.
Silent Cell is comprised of a few key features. First is the fact that the base is huge, or "ultra-huge" as Gigabyte tells it, and covers 602% more surface area than typical coolers. I have no idea what their basis for comparison is, however. Judging by the picture below, they're comparing a mid-range GPU to a high-end, which is a bit misleading.
Added to that, there's "ultra-thin" layered fins which are poised to dissipate heat far more efficiently than thicker fins, aluminum nodes and of course, three copper heatpipes. Because of this design, the cooler is supposed to spread out the heat far better than typical passive coolers, which tend to have one really noticeable hot-spot. We'll have to get in one of their new coolers and a competitors to see just how efficient it really is.
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Thermalright Emphasizes Passive Cooling with their R1x
I'm not quite sure what it is, but there seems to be a huge focus on chassis' at this Computex. Companies who've never released such a product before now are, and it's a bit strange. Is it because they see the need for more selection in the marketplace, or because they know they can do things better? I guess we'll know once we get some in!
Like Xigmatek and Corsair, Thermalright is also jumping on the chassis bandwagon. For some reason, the R1x (what kind of name is that?) didn't really impress me from a design standpoint, but I'm willing to wait to see what the final model looks like before forming a real opinion. Like many other chassis on the market, this one features a tool-less design in most areas except for the PCI slots.
Their tool-less method for removing and installing optical drives is actually patented, and though it looks kind of ugly (this IS a prototype though), the functionality is spot on. You simply push the ODD in, push the knob in and turn. Done.
Of course, what was most interesting was the company's reliance on their passive coolers. Neither the CPU or graphics cards had a fan, so all in all, it should be a rather quiet installation. Except, the company had two fans installed in the bottom, one in the front and two in the top. Seems a little odd to focus on passive cooling with so many chassis fans being used, but it is interesting to look at regardless.
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