Huge graphics cards are nothing new, with the Nvidia RTX 4090 and AMD RX 7900XTX both sporting colossal coolers. However, based on the prototype MSI GPU coolers the company has been demonstrating, we could be set for even larger coolers when the likes of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Ti or AMD Radeon 7950 XTX arrive.
At its booth at the Computex 2023 trade show in Taiwan, MSI was showing three new GPU cooler concepts, the first of which would result in a humongous four-slot graphics card.
This new cooler design experiments with combining aluminum and copper fins in one array of heatsink fins, to take advantage of the different thermal properties of the two materials. Mounted to a heatplate with six heatpipes the array uses copper fins nearer the main heat sources, with aluminum used further away.
Image source: MSI Japan
This would tally with copper having the highest thermal conductivity but being expensive, making it best for pulling heat away from the source quickly. Meanwhile, aluminum’s slightly lower thermal conductivity makes it useful for cheaply filling out the rest of the heatsink’s heat dissipation array.
One thing we can immediately note about the design is that it has the fins oriented vertical with respect to the card’s PCIe slot. This isn’t ideal in terms of directing heated air straight towards your motherboard where these days we often find M.2 SSDs. Solutions like on the Nvidia RTX 4080 Founder Edition cooler that blow heated air out the expansion slot or up and away from the card are best (unless vertically mounting the card).
Image source: Wccftech
The next experimental cooler uses so-called DynaVC technology, which combines a vapor chamber with folded heatpipes. This eliminates the need for soldering the two components together, increasing the thermal conductivity. Such a solution would be useful for more compact cooler designs.
Finally, there’s another take on the idea of an AIO water cooler being incorporated into a graphics card, as we’ve previously seen from the likes of Acer. The precise advantage of a solution such as this isn’t entirely clear, as the key advantage of water-cooling is the ability to mount the radiator away from the heat source, whereas this design has the radiator right next to the card.
Image source: Benchlife
What we do know, though, is that the radiator is 10 percent larger than typical 240mm AIO radiators allowing for 15 percent more water to be held within it. This will increase its overall thermal capacity compared to those sorts of coolers but doesn’t speak to how this design compares to conventional air-cooled designs such as those above.
Regardless, we’re excited to see innovation in the graphics card cooler space and can’t wait to see these coolers come to market when we no doubt see even faster cards based on the Nvidia Ada architecture and AMD RDNA 3 architecture later this year.
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