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Self Contained Water Cooled Radeon X1900, Retail
Spinnerbait writes "Graphics cards are all the rage in the Enthusiast Computing community, where
overclocking standard off-the-shelf components is commonplace. Recently
innovative cooling solutions have been brought to Graphics cards in an effort to
tame the thermals of their power hungry GPUs. It looks like some of the
major vendors have taken it up a notch in this area, with this ATI-based
Sapphire Graphics card that employs a self-contained water cooling system.
Not only does the card have potential for serious overclocking but it should do
so relatively quietly as well."
I wonder how much power this uses if you have your own water cooling for everything else, then a seperate system just for your video card?
Ryan - http://www.thecosmotron.com/
Wait, no, it's from ATI, nevermind.
Man, I've always wanted a water cooler in my PC. Maybe now if I press "Tab", I really do get a Tab?
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
The "article" is a shitty little blurb with a few pictures. Not a single performance number or any bit of useful information.
/. in a while.
My first instinct? Check the link for the submitter's webpage. Oh, what a coincidence.
Look, I'm not one to normally complain about poor stories and worthless submissions, but this one takes the cake. It's the most obvious grab for clicks and advertisement revenue that's been posted on
For shame, CowboyNeal.
Since the article is really only a teaser, there isn't much to be said about it. However, assuming this thing works well, it's a nice direction to see the high-end GPU market head towards. Now if only I could afford one...
This guy's the limit!
Overclock all you want and you are still playing the same game as everyone else.
I'm not trolling, I'm just bitter that everyone is focused on pushing the graphical boundaries of games and leaving the game play for later. I remember a time when it was about hours of game play not frames per second.
*goes off to play Deus Ex*
I really don't want graphics cards with better cooling systems. I want them to RUN COOLER in the first place. Water-cooling a device just allows you to push the problem back a little further, before it really starts causing problems. Pretty soon you'll have to upgrade your power supply and home airconditioner to use a shinny new GPU.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I think it is about time to start thinking about the GPU as a device, like a cd-rom or harrdrive instead of a card.
They already require an external power supply in some cases, and with SLI are using a special type of connector.
I'd like to see a GPU that comes in the form of a 5.25 bay expansion, with a pci-x card that connects it via a cable to the mobo.
Then I think the industry could come up with a standard cable for all cards. Or not, given that nvidia or whoever could come up with just about anything. I could see a card that interfaces through the memory slots ( if your motherboard had enough realastate). A GPU directly connected to Hypertransport anyone?
It could be someting other then water, like antifreeze.. Woudl be able to use a peltier block and run it even colder then you can with water.
;)
Or even sodium. So what if it breaks and the user dies
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Does it have to be water to cool these GPUs? Is it water because of its relative hight Specific Heat Capacity, or because it's cheap and readily available?
I can see slashdotters increasing the capacity of the "tank" that stores water on these GPUs to make sure the GPU stays cool.
Remember when that company introduced cryogenically cooled PCs? I got one at work. It was amazing - it ran at 1GHz and I had the fastest machine in the building. But a few months later it was no longer the fastest in the building but it was definitely the dumbest machine in the building - especially with the 5 minute wait for it to cool down before booting. I won't make the same mistake with water cooled graphics cards.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Is it actually self-contained if you have to refill it?
Is it actually silent if it still has a fan?
I think what TF[A|S] actually ment was 'pre-fitted water-cooled ATI'
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
The last publicity pictures I saw of this card had a couple of "Models" showing it off. The blonde one looked like they had picked her up off of W124th and Lennox at about 4AM.
Shudder.
sig?
When I looked at the pictures, my first thought was that it would not be more silent, since it still would have to move the same heat, while it might be good for overclocking. But I guess that there is a possibility of it running quietly since there are a bigger surface area for the air to move the heat than on a normal GPU cooling fan and heatsink.
I made my own PC watercooled about 1½ year ago with the purpose to make it more silent. My idea was to cool the CPU and GPU using both passive and active cooling.
I got a radiator from Innovatek.de for passive cooling inside and a small deep one for the inside for active cooling with a Papst fan.
Then I got a microcontroller that can run on its own, measure the water temperature and control fans, as well a a emergency shutdown if the water gets too hot or the pump fails.
The end result were fantastic, the PC runs almost silent when doing anything than playing games(which I don't do much anymore) but when playing games it still have the power. It manages to run mostly with passive cooling when not playing games. It is so silent that you have to look at the power LED to make sure that you have turned the PC on. When I do play games and the water starts heating up, the microcontroller starts the watercooling fan and adjusts the speed to keep the temperature down.
On mistake that I did make was that I went into it with my usual approach of reading tons of reviews on the internet to find the best cooling CPU/GPU heads and generally getting parts from different vendors that I determined would make the best solution. Exept from the internal radiator that was deeper than any other I could find, I can now see that it didn't matter which parts I used when I was not going to do overclocking.
It is better to stick with parts from one vendor so you don't have problems getting them to fit or work together. Like different sizes of tubes etc. Also the microcontroller from one vendor could not monitor the pump for another.
Anyone care to recommend a $100 non-AGP graphics card? I'm looking to upgrade from integrated graphics on a new system, and don't have the coin for a high-end choice. I'm not expecting to get 7800-level performance; just wondering what might offer good bang for the buck.
That ain't liver; that's beef kidney!
The EVGA GeForce 7900GTX CO 512MB Black Pearl is water-cooled, but not self-contained.
This card looks very boring. My quad fan card with state of the art stealth cooling fins and racing stripes looks way better. If they added some gold and diamond dust to the water to increases this cards bling I would consider buying it.
Hobby Robotics
On Sapphire Technologies there is a little more info, but not much.
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Maybe now I can play Doom 3 with the graphics settings all the way up!
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
What keeps the graphics RAM chips cool? Usually air is blown down onto the processor whence it goes across the RAM chip coolers.
In the photos, the RAM chips still have cooling fins, and they're still aligned radially around the core; however, since there is no airflow there they're surely going to overheat...
I guess today is a passable day to die.
Watercooling doesn't require you to wait for anything to cool down.
Once you get past a certain number of frames per second, it doesn't freaking matter. It's not going to one bit more for the quality of the experience.
One day, graphics cards will be able to do soo much on their own, they won't even want me to play the game with them anymore.
They grow up soo fast. =P
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
" I think it is about time to start thinking about the GPU as a device, like a cd-rom or harrdrive instead of a card."
Do you feel the same way about your processor?
"They already require an external power supply in some cases, and with SLI are using a special type of connector."
PCIe doesn't require an extra connector.
"I'd like to see a GPU that comes in the form of a 5.25 bay expansion, with a pci-x card that connects it via a cable to the mobo."
Violates the KISS principle.
"Then I think the industry could come up with a standard cable for all cards. Or not, given that nvidia or whoever could come up with just about anything. I could see a card that interfaces through the memory slots ( if your motherboard had enough realastate). A GPU directly connected to Hypertransport anyone?"
Nvidia already has on-board video.
The smartests thing is ASUS's putting the GPU on the OTHER side of the PCB, even if it violates the specs.
Why do ATI give Mobile chipsets the finger? Acer is one OEM that is not supported in their mobility, why can NV provide Unified driver sets and ATI cannot, is it too technical for ATI? ATI as usual, let down their end users by drivers in favour of OEM's. Money from OEM's, Finger to the end user. My next laptop is a dual core AMD but most likely they will be ATI mobility chipsets and as such if it is Acer im screwed out of the box.
Remember that spate of stories we were getting about the new 1000W = 1KW power supply units [PSUs]?
Here are a few of them:
Now consider, for example, the specs on the PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool® 1KW PSU: Now suppose three things: Okay, now do like Sponge Bob and Patrick in the box, and use your I-M-A-G-I-N-A-T-I-O-N, keeping in mind how Death was stalking Chad Donella's character in Final Destination I: PS: I assume the folks at "Sapphire Graphics" have never heard of this thing called The Association of Trial Lawyers of America...A handy database for those shopping for a videocard.
...onto more efficient chips rather than just bolting on cooling to the problem. That goes for the entire processor industry too.
Slashdot jokes have one thing in common with the hole drilled in the girl's locker room wall. It's all about a cheap thrill.
CUE watercooling wich takes the heat via the water outside of the case where you can have a slow unobstructed fan get rid of the heat.
Almost every design I seen always gets the hot water out of the case to be cooled down by large unobstructed fans.
Yet this setup seems to pump the water from the hot graphics card to a spare PCI slot in your PC where the fan will be blowing the heat away right inside your computer.
If you unlucky right back onto your gpu.
To be efficient the cooler would have to be outside your case, with the water cables coming out of the back of the gpu and the cooler not having a PCI mounting but something that is easily attached to your case.
It is not the first time I seen this mistake, people put the nicest fans inside their case but never spend any time considering that all that does is blow the hot air around if you do not somehow setup a flow to carry it out. Oh and another to get cool air back in.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Is this some sort of lame pun?
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Tight spaces that don't allow enough airflow is a definate use. There's a Shuttle box with an SLI setup that I love the specs on, I became a serious Shuttle fan after building one recently. The downside is all the reviews love it but point out overheading issues if you use one of the video card slots even if it's in a single card configuration. One of these cards could solve the problem.
I love how some of you guys are all so pious and complain. Do you sit in front of your machines all day with nothing better to do than rip on slashdot posts?
I actually know the folks over at HotHardware and their content is typically pretty strong, and I know their host setup as well, dedicated front end servers and database servers.
Yep the slashdotting like that is pretty tough for any server to handle sometimes but at least they have a lot of good content on a dynamically generated site that easier to navigate than most out there.
Check out this picture. It looks like it just dumps the heat inside your case... great...
That was my first reaction. This thing eats up a lot of room in a case, more than an SLI rig I would think (which strikes me as the competitor). Are you better off with this or with 2 X1600s in CrossFire?
I've read on Silentpc.com that transparent plastic makes more noise than opaque plastic. Graphics card makers should use opaque plastic and large fans to keep the noise down.
Look again. It dumps half the heat in the case, and blows the other half out. That's the sacrifice for a near-silent, 2-slot water cooled solution. If the cooler card took up 2 slots by itself I'm sure the fan could blow the air out the back. But then that's 3 slots total. The 120mm case fan(s) should handle this card just fine.
Well, you MAY get the GPU up some, but who cares when your memory has NO HEATSINK AT ALL!
Overclock all you want and you are still playing the same game as everyone else.
If I can see you but you can't see me, are we really playing the same game?
If I can turn and point faster than you can, are we still playing the same game?
That's the whole point behind the video card race, and why I went to console gaming. Becuase at least there, more people are indeed playing the same game (not as true now that some people play in HD and some not).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
As you can see from the other photos, one end of the cooler vents out of the case while the other end is closed.
I would like to remind everyone that the reason why water or whatever fluid is inside it helps cool down the card is because of its high heat capacity. This also means that its slower to cool it down when it's already very hot.
AC current doesn't just arc inside something. Because the current is going back and forth, it makes charged waves in whatever medium the wire is touching.
This is why downed power lines are so dangerous. If they were DC, they'd just hit the ground and spark, possibly lighting whatever they hit on fire, but otherwise not particularly threatening anyone. You'd have to touch one to be hurt.
A downed AC power line, though, pushes electrons out and then pulls electrons in. This makes a kind of ripple of alternating positive and negative charge radiating out from the point where the line is touching the ground. There is an actual voltage difference in the earth itself around an AC line.
If your right foot is further from the wire than your left foot, you become the shortest path for this voltage. You're a better conductor than the ground is. The current arcs out of the ground, up through you, and back into the ground.
I know this is the case for downed lines. I would assume the danger of a toaster in the bath is the same. Your body, being full of salts, is a better conductor than the bathwater. There are voltage differences within the bathwater, and parts of your body become shorts for these differences.
Not exactly true. Anyone who's ever played a shooter can tell you that your FPS mileage may vary depending on what's going on around you. If you're running at 40 FPS when there's two guys on screen, but 20 FPS when they start shooting, the game ends up being choppy during fire-fights and that could get you killed.
Case-in-point, I saw an Anandtech review of some new hotness video cards and they tested F.E.A.R. on the highest settings, and they averaged about 50 FPS, until some explosions went off and their framerate dropped to zero. Having more FPS means that when shit happens, you don't take a hit that will kill your experience.
Granted, that doesn't justify buying an expensive-as-a-game-console video card.