14 DAY TRIAL // Today definitely seems poised to be the day of odd announcements, in a manner of speaking. Granted, that Samsung, Acer and ASUS would unveil new mobile PCs is not exactly that odd a development, but the so-called PowerJack from PowerColor definitely was out of the ordinary. Now, the same company has brought out a rather unusual cooling mechanism that might just give a new meaning to the words 'adjustable fan.'
Basically, the hardware developer took a break from actually making overly customized video cards in order to make products that go along with said video cards. The aforementioned PowerJack is one such product. The other invention is known as the Vortex and, as odd as it may sound, is a cooling mechanism, a so-called fansink, that can actually adjust its thickness.
The Vortex, like so many other cooling solutions, has an aluminum heatsink, onto which is strapped a fairly large, though supposedly silent, fan. Thus far, nothing seems strange. What is peculiar is that said fan can actually be 'pulled up' a few centimeters. This can enhance cooling efficiency significantly. In fact, in two-slot mode, the Vortex supposedly performs as well as the cooler that the HD 5770 PCS+ is equipped with. The hardware developer used an ATI Radeon HD 5770 in order to demonstrate the invention.
Basically, the fansink can switch between occupying two and three PCI slots. Unfortunately, its maker didn't exactly say when an official product equipped with the Vortex will debut. Still, Fudzilla seems to think a HD 5770 will come out soon and will cost about as much as the aforementioned PCS+ version. The DirectX 11 card will have 800 stream processor, 1GB of GDDR5, a 128-bit interface, and DVD-D, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs. Finally, the clock speeds are unknown, but they will probably be higher than those of the stock solution.