Hardware stub

NVidia Maxwell 'Turbo Fan' Reference Cooler Patent Surfaces

Posted on June 2, 2014

Nvidia is well-known for their high-quality, relatively quiet, and well-performing Titan reference cooler that, frankly, looks fantastic. This is in contrast to AMD’s most recent stock coolers, which employ a plastic shroud and sound like vacuums fighting. And while for some other components we try to avoid stock cooling, people using small, restrictive airflow cases, or using multiple GPUs (without watercooling) often can get better results by using stock cooling due to how it pushes air out the back instead of dumping it in the case simply to be recirculated.

nvidia-turbofan1

In late January, nVidia filed a patent for their “TubroFan” design, a new fan concept to be used on GPUs that certainly looks promising.

nvidia-turbofan2

As we can see from this design shot, nVidia’s new “TurboFan” design includes an axial fan which pushes air into the cooler, and a radial/centripetal fan that then directs the air through the heatsinks. This is similar to MSI’s RADAX design, as used in MSI’s low-profile GPUs.

nvidia-msi-radax

Nvidia’s patent claims their new “TurboFan” design will lead to improved cooling and lower noise levels compared to previous stock cooling solutions. Assuming this will be used on Maxwell GPUs, which is likely the case, it could lead to very quiet stock cooling due to the improved cooler and thermal efficiency of Maxwell. I’m personally excited to see how these coolers will perform -- one might even say I’m a … fan of this new design. I expect Maxwell coolers to perform similar to or better than what exists now, considering their stock coolers will likely feature high-performance vapor chambers like Kepler coolers do.

-Michael “The Bear” Kerns.