Cooling System

Nvidia first implemented this cooling solution in its professional graphics card Quadro FX 4500. Quiet and efficient, it first moved on to the GeForce 7800 GTX 512 (for details see our article called NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 512: Faster, Higher, Stronger!) and then landed on the new GeForce 7900 GTX.

It’s designed quite simply: the copper sole that has direct contact with the GPU transfers its heat to the four heat pipes which pass the heat over to the two sets of thin aluminum ribs on the right and left of the fan; the ribs are covered with a profiled case. Only part of the hot air is exhausted outside, but practice suggests that this doesn’t affect the overall cooling efficiency.

The cooler uses an 80mm fan with good aerodynamics of the blades, which ensure high performance at a minimum noise. In fact, the cooler is practically silent since the fan speed is only about 1000rpm most of the time.

The cooling system is manufactured well. The aluminum ribs are pressed tightly to the heat pipes to ensure proper thermal contact. Both sections of the heatsink become very hot at work, indicting good heat transfer. Nvidia made the cooler light by using aluminum in it; there is also a smaller chance of damaging the graphics processor die under such a cooler.

Nvidia’s traditional thermal interfaces are employed here: a dark-gray thick thermal paste between the GPU and the cooler and soft pads soaked in white thermal paste between the memory chips and the cooler’s base.

This cooler has done well on the GeForce 7800 GTX 512. The GeForce 7900 GTX is expected to generate even less heat, so there should be no cooling-related problems at all with this graphics card.