

The Sandia Cooler: A totally new CPU heatsink design that's 30% more efficient - primesuspect
http://icrontic.com/article/sandia-cooler-30-more-efficient-and-licensed-to-an-unnamed-company

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gtsc
Heading of link is wrong: original source article says its 30 TIMES more
efficient, not 30%. This would be a seriously big deal if it's actually
commercialized: based on the Sandia video I have no doubt they have a working
prototype.

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marshray
Whether 30% or 30 x, is this a big deal?

How much power does a typical CPU cooling fan draw right now?

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gtsc
Random fan on Newegg has ~2W power draw, so not much. But many processors are
limited by heat dissipation, so better heat transfer could mean faster clock
speeds (think water cooling, but much more convenient). Also means the fans
could run much quieter (see the video), which makes sense since most of the
fan's energy is going into noise/vibrations.

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marshray
Does this fan actually provide a better absolute heat transfer rate?

I think if it's 30% more efficient, that probably just means the fan itself
consumes that much less power for a given heat radiating capacity.

Maybe it'll be a bit smaller or a lot quieter or something, but I don't see it
"revolutionizing" anything.

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antihero
The main issue I see with this is if it gets knocked or something breaks
inside it, a giant hunk of spinning metal is not what you want flying around
inside your lovingly built PC.

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Rickasaurus
But can it go for 6 months without getting clogged with dust?

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antihero
Apparently because it's moving, dust particles "bounce off".

