GeForceFX: NVIDIA goes Hollywood?

Cooler

The NVIDIA reference card shown at Comdex with FX Flow cooling solution.

Naturally, a chip consisting of roughly 125 million transistors produces a respectable amount of thermal energy. To convey this heat away from the chip efficiently (and quietly), NVIDIA has developed a proprietary cooling solution for the GeForceFX, called Flow FX. The copper heatsink is based on a heatpipe design - similar to that of the ABIT OTES - and conveys the heat away from the chip directly out of the case. This helps to lower the ambient temperature inside the case a good deal.

The demo board, which NVIDIA demonstrated in an nForce2 system, produced a lot of heat. The air coming out of the fan grille is hot to the touch. While the system was quite loud overall, we could still make out the Flow FX fan - not a very positive trait. NVIDIA has promised to refine the design to make it quieter.

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You can see the air intake on the right and the exhaust on the left.

The heatpipes.

A huge cooler on the back of the card.