OCZ’s WayCool Carbon-based Cooler
03.21.07 - 07:55pm
Back in the day during the clockspeed wars between AMD and Intel the Pentium 4 was a mean piece of silicon. It’s Netburst architecture was designed from the ground up to hit astronomical clockspeeds however with these clockspeeds came terrible current leakage and insane amounts of power consumption. Since the Netburst days power consumption on processors has dropped considerably with mobile processors consuming 35 watts or less and most desktop processors sliding in under 65 watts. The newest line of quadcore processors from Intel however have bumped the power envelope back up to 130 watts, exactly double what current dualcore processors are consuming. While this bump in total dissipated power or TDP is understandable, it does nothing to help curb processor temperatures. Routinely QX6700’s hit 60-70 celsius temperatures at stock speeds on the stock Intel heatsink but even beefy aftermarket heatsinks such as the Tuniq Tower 120 have trouble keeping overclocked QX6700’s below 70 celsius, now let me OCZ and their latest heatsink prototype. Normally OCZ is known for their performance memory modules but their recent branching out to all manners of computer parts has lead to some interesting prototypes and products.
Traditional air-transfer heatsinks either rely on massive amounts of finned copper or a combination of a copper processor base, heatpipes, and large aluminum fins to dissipate the heat. These traditional heatsinks do a decent job so long as the heat needing dissipation doesn’t exceed their specifications but with QX6700’s and Q6600’s capable of dissipating nearly 300 watts when overclocked you can imagine temperatures spike. Most enthusiasts will take the jump into watercooling or single stage phase cooling in hopes of eking out every last bit of performance from their processors however a new prototype from OCZ may simplify their lives considerably. The current material of choice in manufacturing heatsinks has been soft shiny copper for good reason, it makes a fantastic thermal conductor. With a thermal conductivity that rivals silver but with a price tag that is much more appealing to the wallet, copper naturally makes the best metal to use for transferring heat. But what if you didn’t limit yourself to just metals, what if you considered other materials? In an ideal world pure synthetic diamond would be the ideal thermal interface with a thermal conductivity 5 to 6 times higher than copper however just like silver it isn’t economically feasible, yet. However, carbon, the element that composes diamonds, comes in another cheaper flavor called graphite. The same soft stuff used in pencils has a thermal conductivity that sits in between copper and diamonds depending on the quality and structure of the material’s crystal lattice. With that academic lesson out of the way, let’s see an actual application of this material.
OCZ’s new cooler utilizes a graphite base, micro-tubes, tons of fins, a liquid pump, and an oil-based coolant. Not unlike a traditional watercooling system, this cooler will use the oil to transfer heat from the base to the fin-stack and dissipate this heat into the surrounding air. OCZ claims that this cooler will be capable of dissipating over 300 watts of heat, meaning it will be quadcore capable which is great news considering how that is the direction the market is going it. The tubes and fins used within the cooler have been designed to optimize surface area which will be what lets it handle such hot processors. There currently aren’t any reviews of this product available at this time and there is no place to purchase them but if OCZ lives up to their 300 watt claim then you will surely see one of these reviewed if the price tag is cheaper than building another single stage. Price sadly will be the biggest problem, high quality graphite that will be hard enough to not crush under the pressure of the cooler while maintaining a thermal conductivity higher than copper won’t be a cheap component to purchase. I sure hope this doesn’t become another bit of vaporware, seems like the hardware industry has been littered with it lately. Now where is my x2900XT, I misplaced it somewhere..
Relevant Links:
HEXUS.net Source
OnScreen Partnership Announcement with OCZ
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