14 DAY TRIAL // More Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 SuperOverclock WindForce 5X details and pictures have reportedly surfaced on the internet. This is the second vapor chamber cooling system we see on a GeForce 600 series graphics card.
Actually, since the card was pictured before, it might not be the first time, but at the time of the first pictures, we did not have such details about the cooling system.
The other GeForce 600 series card to use vapor chamber cooling is Nvidia’s own GeForce GTX 690 dual GPU board. The GTX 690 uses two separate heatsinks with one vapor chamber cooling each.
Gigabyte’s Windforce 5x is practically cooled by five 40 mm diameter fans that will probably generate some serious noise. However, they will, most likely, offer more efficient cooling than fans that blow air in all directions.
Gigabyte used a huge, three-slot wide cooling system that has a vapor chamber at the bottom that’s taking the heat of the GPU and the on board memory. The heatsink attached to the vapor chambers is improved by five 8 mm huge heatpipes that are increasing the heat transfer from the vapor chamber top the rest of the heatsink.
The densely packed heatsink fins are topped with a metal plate, creating vertical tunnels through which the 40 mm top situated cooling fans will pull fresh air coming from the bottom of the card.
The fact that the air is travelling through the small space between the heatsink fins for a smaller distance is actually a significant improvement. If a back blowing turbine-like fan tried to push air through the entire length of the video card instead of its height as fins are oriented now, the rotational speed would have had to be much higher, and the cooling efficiency would have been considerably lower.
The thing is that pushing air through such long “tunnels” between the tightly packed fins leads to increase air friction between the air and the “tunnel” walls, and the rotation speed of the fan must be greatly increased to manage to push the air through the entire length of the “tunnel”.
There is also the problem of efficiency, as the air already pre-heated by the heat taken of some of the board’s components will be blown off over the fins that are meant to cool other components.
Gigabyte’s solution, although not quite elegant and occupying a considerable volume, is very well designed and will likely obtain the best results among the other custom cooled GeForce GTX 680 pack.
