Vapor Chamber Also Chills Inno3D's GTX 465

When NVIDIA finally launched the GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480 graphics adapters, they immediately became two things. For one, they, or at least the GTX 480, became the fastest card on the market. The other title they gained, in addition to power-hungry beasts, was of the hottest boards available. This last attribute is not exactly of the most fortuitous variety, since heat, even though supposedly intended and normal for the Fermi GPU, can affect the rest of the system.

NVIDIA's cards didn't gain as much face as they could because of this drawback. On the other hand, OEMs were quick to start stretching their brains in their quest to come up with new types of cooling mechanisms. The result seems to be a more widespread use of the Vapor Chamber technology that Sapphire's Toxic and Vapor-X lines of video cards have been equipped with for more than a year.

The vapor chamber cooler that Inno3D plans on taking advantage of will, predictably, take up two PCI slots, will boast five or six heatpipes and will be equipped with a ball bearing fan with a rotary speed between 1000RPM and 4200RPM (rotations per minute). All in all, it should weigh about 420 grams. The first product to feature it is reportedly going to be a special version of the GeForce GTX 465, dubbed GTX 465 VapourX. There is no telling when this device shows up though, but it will be interesting to see how much lower the operational temperatures actually drop.

Inno3D isn't the only one with this idea, of course. In fact, Galaxy has already demonstrated a version of the GeForce GTX 480 armed with this very technology. Unfortunately, that product's pricing and availability details are just as unknown, though the fact that a working prototype is already on display seems to suggest a possibly shorter time of arrival to market.