Legit Reviews

SAN JOSE, Calf. April 2, 2008 – Today Asetek announced the availability of its liquid cooling system for the new nVidia GeForce 9800GTX and GeForce 9800GX2 graphics cards. Asetek is the first liquid cooling solution developed to exceed the stringent thermal performance, low noise and daunting reliability requirements demanded by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

The graphics GPU power budget is constantly increasing as enthusiasts and professional workstation end users exhibit an insatiable desire for higher frame rates and resolution. Thermal management of the graphics card is an ever increasing challenge with every new generation of Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), often at the sacrifice of acceptable fan noise.

The factor limiting the maximum GPU frequency of operation is often the thermal limitations of the graphic card. This inability to provide the GPU and board devices with sufficient thermal margins limits the board’s ability to be over clocked and often the fan noise becomes objectionable as air cooled systems strain in an attempt to remove the generated heat.

Asetek’s cooling solution approach eliminates these barriers utilizing hybrid cooling technology whereby the GPU is cooled by a liquid cold plate while the memory and power sub-systems are cooled by forced air convection.

• Performance – The maximum performance and ability to overclock the graphic card is dependent upon the thermal design providing low device temperatures. Asetek’s thermal solution reduces the GPU temperature by over 25°C compared to solely air cooled designs providing excellent margins for higher clock speeds and improved graphic performance.

• Noise - Annoying noise which has been increasing in recent years is virtually eliminated. Even in hot ambient conditions, the noise level of the card will never exceed 22dBA, about the level of a quiet whisper, where the typical air cooling solutions are approaching 50dB(A), about the level of a loud conversation or many street corners.

• System Thermal Management – The traditional air coolers dump a lot of the graphic card heat in to the chassis heating up other components and increasing the overall noise level. With Asetek’s liquid cooling the heat from the graphics card is exhausted outside of the system chassis allowing other components on the motherboard to operate cooler and with higher reliability System fans have less work to do and are able to run slower reducing system noise still further.

“As computer power budgets increase and chassis configurations get smaller, managing the system thermal problem is becoming much more severe”, said Gary Baum, Asetek’s Sr. VP of Marketing , “Low noise is the new requirement for consumer PC’s and workstations and liquid cooling can achieve both optimal thermal performance and the desired low system noise” Baum continued.

Asetek’s liquid cooling solutions are OEM ready. Each new design undergoes rigorous reliability and environmental testing. Shock, vibration and thermal stress testing assuring 50,000 hour operational lifetime with no end user maintenance required. This high reliability, no maintenance system is ideal for large volume OEMs.