X-bit labs

ASUS Extreme N6600GT Silencer: Extremely Silent, Extremely Hot (page 4)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Anton Shilov

[ 10/19/2005 | 10:40 AM ]

Closer Look: Cooling System

ASUS’ cooling system used with the Extreme N6600 GT Silencer graphics card is a relatively unique device. We have never seen such a construction, in fact.

The main radiator of the device is a large heatsink made of aluminum that cools-down both GeForce 6600 GT graphics processing unit and memory on the front-side of the board. The heatsink is connected to a relatively large copper radiator mounted above the graphics card using a heatpipe and a special mounting mechanism.

The mechanism allows to turn the large radiator located on top of the card by 90 degrees in order to cool it down using the flow from the central processing unit’s cooling system. Unfortunately, in case you are using a tall CPU cooler, you will not be able to turn the radiator to the position above that fan and consequently the flow from the CPU fan will not be able to cool-down the GPU. ASUS recommends that height of the CPU cooler should not be more than 11 centimeters so that the large radiator of the Extreme N6600 GT Silencer could be cooled down using the CPU fan.

Unfortunately, we have a large Gigabyte cooler used in our testbed, which is why we could not take advantage of ASUSTeK’s mechanism. Still, we believe that the device will show itself really well in case of a slow CPU fan due to natural reasons.

While the above mentioned positioning of the large copper radiator has its advantages and disadvantages, it still should be kept in mind that in case a user has a fan located on the left side of ATX computer chassis, the board will be cooled-down well even without turning the heatsink by 90 degrees. The problem is that few people seeking for silence are likely to install additional fans on sides of their computer cases.