Video Cooling Issues

Video Card Cooling

We don't think anyone can dispute the fact that video cards are running hotter than ever. With the exception of some of the just-released video chipsets, video cards are very hot, and trying to see how hot by touching the chip might result in a burned finger! Many video card manufacturers are incorporating heatsinks and fans on their cards, or just heatsinks alone. The video manufacturers have recognized the extreme heat that is produced after many hours of intense video usage (gaming), and we should as well. Fortunately for us, companies that produce cooling solutions for CPUs are turning their eyes towards the video world as well. As a result, we are being offered new solutions for video card cooling.

The same as CPU cooling

The basics of cooling the video card can be treated similarly as how a CPU is cooled, except that a video chipset may have a few chips (texture units) to cool. Otherwise, cooling is quit similar in that you have a chip that is producing heat, which must be transferred somehow. If the chip sat there without any air, it would radiate heat, which would be quite an inefficient way to deal with getting rid of heat! If you blew a current of air over the chip, the situation has slightly improved, as the radiated heat is drawn away by convection. However, we'd much rather have the heat leave the CPU as quickly as possible. Two objects in contact with each other is a good way to transfer heat, and ideally we'd like to have the object be able to absorb heat quickly and radiate it rapidly. That is why heatsinks were developed, and why we have fans mounted on them to get rid of heat!

Space considerations

Video card cooling is a bit trickier than CPU cooling, though. While the CPU interface area is quite spacious and allows for the huge, monster fans that we saw in Part 2 of the guide, video cards are very space restricted. By nature of their architecture, video card chipsets are hard to stick things on. A video card is going to have very little space between itself and the card next to it, unless you have an empty slot next to it. However, empty slots are a commodity in today's systems! Most likely, you're stuck in the same position that many of us are in, which is a shortage of slots. Luckily, the video cooling solutions that have been made take this into account, and most are quite thin. Additionally, there are a couple models of video coolers that don't attach anything to the card itself. These units use only the airflow to cool the chips.