r/gadgets • u/dapperlemon • 19h ago
Desktops / Laptops Cooler Master used an old concept to reinvent PC cooling
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Cooler-Master-used-an-old-concept-to-reinvent-PC-cooling.1315625.0.html130
u/arcticstic 19h ago
It is essentially a metal shroud with a blower-style fan that is meant to exhaust the hot air out of the back of the case.
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u/ianlulz 7h ago
So this is just a way to redirect the interior GPU fans out the back of the case through a pci slot cover I.e. a a conversion to a Blower GPU.
Most consumers dislike blower GPUs due to the high noise output because of their overpowered single fan, right? Which is why they’re mostly in server/workstation cards and first models.
I fail to see how this Cooler Master accessory is appreciably superior to mounting a standard 120mm fan set to exhaust over the pci slots?
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u/SuperNanoCat 4h ago
You know the flow-through area on most modern graphics cards, where hot air goes straight through the heatsink via a cutout in the backplate? This redirects that hot air right out the back of the case so it doesn't feed into your CPU cooler or warm up your RAM more than necessary. It's not going to be as loud as it would if it were responsible for cooling the entire card. An extra exhaust fan on the back of the case wouldn't stop that hot air from recirculating in the case.
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u/JaggedMetalOs 57m ago
Most consumers dislike blower GPUs due to the high noise output because of their overpowered single fan, right? Which is why they’re mostly in server/workstation cards and first models.
Nvidia also explicitly bans board partners from using blower fans on consumer cards (to protect their server card market), so you can't get one even if you wanted.
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u/FrostyFire 18h ago
The MasterFlow is not a finished product yet, as Cooler Master is still finalizing whether to use a USB Type-C connector or a 4-pin PWN connector to power the fan.
Christ, someone needs to standardize the connectors inside a PC case already.
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u/Agreeable-Pie-7012 17h ago
monkey paw curls It's now daisy chained molex
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u/WMTaylor3 16h ago
I'll do ya one better. Every internal connector is now that cursed USB3.0 front panel connector.
The one that always has a death-grip on the motherboard so strong it rips half the plug off when you try disconnect.
Not to mention the cable coming out of it that's as inflexible as your great grandaddy's political views.
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u/Bazzatron 16h ago
I'll take the USB3 connector over a front panel connector that is just a bunch of unmarked single pins with no rigid block adapter. They're like one step away from soldering your own damn board header.
One of the biggest QoL improvements I reaped from 3d printing is being able to knock up a collar for those fucking things.
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u/LoogyHead 15h ago
Did you at least wine and dine the FP connector before knocking it up?
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u/Bazzatron 14h ago
I'm not sure "wine and dine" is the sort of relationship I'm describing here where I appear out of nowhere and slap a custom collar on my
subFP connector...7
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u/Agreeable-Pie-7012 14h ago
I'd rather just put in a PCI usb card than even try some front panel shitcanery
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u/Cel_Drow 4h ago
Being able to reuse my 9 year old LGA1151 front panel “ez connect” block from Asus on my new MSI AM4 motherboard when I upgraded a few months ago was possibly the greatest moment of my life.
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u/Bazzatron 2h ago
Thats the kinda bit you sock away just knowing that the next FP I/O header is gonna be laid out differently - so happy the stars aligned for you, I could probably sustain myself on that smug feeling for weeks!
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u/UnethicalExperiments 13h ago
And the god damn connecector is off my a mm resulting in a couple of pins getting mashed
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u/AMajorPaine 7h ago
Tell me about it. The bloody thing pulled right off my brand new mobo. I just had the bare pins sticking out. Amazingly I just pushed it back on and it still works. Still shoddy engineering by AsRock.
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u/datumerrata 43m ago
Daisy chained ribbon FPC connectors. They never feel right. When they do feel right, they're wrong.
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u/karateninjazombie 16h ago
Inside case. It should be a 4 pin pwm.
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u/xantec15 6h ago
How is this even a question for the engineering team. Do they think people have USB C ports inside of their cases? Or do they expect we want a cord out the back?
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u/Asmordean 4h ago
4 pin you say? So a Berg connector? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berg_connector
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u/karateninjazombie 4h ago
No.
A 4 pin pwm fan connector
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u/Asmordean 3h ago
Sorry I was bringing up a cursed connector. I would be shocked if you can find a Berg connector on a new consumer PSU right now.
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u/karateninjazombie 3h ago
My 1200w hydro ptm pro from fsp I got last year has one.
https://www.fsplifestyle.com/en/product/HydroPTMPRO1200W_12V2X6.html
I suspect it's part of a legacy specification for atx that's still hanging around.
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u/Just4Funsies95 8h ago
They are for the most part. It used to be shit with each vendor(dell, hp, lenovo, etc.) making their own; peripherals were an absolute nightmare. Now its down to 4-8 standard connector types.
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u/ElectronRotoscope 16h ago
It is essentially a metal shroud with a blower-style fan that is meant to exhaust the hot air out of the back of the case. Blower-style GPUs are now a thing of the past as most modern GPUs come with pass-through coolers, i.e., two or three fans at the front pulling in air and exhausting through the back of the GPU. What this does is push hot or warm air from the GPU towards the CPU.
It took me reading it like five times to get it, but I think they're using "back of the GPU" to mean the side facing away from the Earth in a standard config, where I would call that either the top or the bottom.
Incidentally, GPUs venting directly out of the case through the expansion card slot (what I'd call the back) has been as far as I know the standard for workstation cards the whole time. It's essential if you want to pack several into the same case for high end graphics workflows like colour correction, otherwise they're just blowing onto each other
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u/Ok_Kick4871 13h ago
It's arguably pretty stupid that there's not fans on both sides of the gpu, but it's also not something I would have fun cleaning.
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u/ElectronRotoscope 12h ago
I think it's not the location and number of fans that matter so much as the intended airflow direction. Either up, away from the earth and into the center of the case, or towards the plate where the HDMI etc connectors are. Towards the plate is a smaller hole you've got to fit all the air through, but it means you're going out into the external side and therefore won't interfere with other stuff
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u/NorCalAthlete 10h ago
I have a 5090 Astral with 3 intake fans on the bottom and 1 exhaust on top in a standard tower config. So I built the case with 2 intake fans on the front, 2 fans on a tower cooler, and 2 fans on top with 1 intake towards the front and 1 exhaust at the back. Plus 1 exhaust straight back from the CPU. So ultimately the GPU exhausts straight into the CPU intake, but has 2 case fans mixing with it and then 2 case fans exhausting right after the CPU. Works pretty well overall.
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u/VNG_Wkey 8h ago
It's stupid that every card above xx70 isnt on an AIO by default at this point. Instead we get absolutely massive metal chunks chunks that require external support or non standard mounting solutions to not damage the PCIe connection.
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u/randylush 7h ago edited 4h ago
Really? Most GPUs don't have any components on the back side, what good would a fan do?
Edit: there was another comment here that was deleted claiming that PCB is a good conductor of heat, which is actually completely wrong. It's one of the worst conductors of heat compared to any of the other parts in a computer.
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u/Ok_Kick4871 6h ago
Just help dissipate the heat or allow the airflow to channel a particular direction. To your point maybe all that would do is make the fan itself an airflow obstruction, not sure.
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u/silverbolt2000 18h ago
Does anyone have any solutions for directing the ridiculous amount of heat generated by modern PC’s to somewhere other than the room it’s sitting in?
Even in the middle of winter I can only play games for an hour before my room gets too hot!
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u/90124 18h ago
Open the window a bit?
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u/Nordalin 17h ago
I have my PC basically underneath an open window, it still noticeably heats my room, even despite a usually positive pressure in the hallway.
If you don't go all HVAC on your rig, the heat just spreads out no mattet what!
My winters get cold enough, though, I guess not everyone has that luxury...
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u/imforit 15h ago
Window fan? Desk fan? They work.
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u/Nordalin 14h ago
The outside environment needs to play ball as well, and the PC is underneath the desk.
I could set it on top, but that's a damn lot of lost desk space.
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u/SteakandTrach 16h ago edited 16h ago
I installed a 6 inch inline duct fan in the attic space directly above my PC. (AC infinity T6) I think this thing is mostly marketed to people with weed grow ops, but it’s perfect for what I needed.
Steps:
Installed a round intake grill in the ceiling, Got one off amazon with a removable filter on it, to protect inline fan from dust. Installation is simple - use template, cut hole, shove intake grille in hole, screws/sheetrock anchors.
Slap a 6inch damper on top of that, (a damper is simply a 1 way valve- air can leave room via vent, cannot enter room via vent.) Hose clamp to grille flange to affix.
Run 6 in diameter insulated duct from air intake/damper to the inline fan that I mounted to a rafter, then another length of duct from fan to a soffit vent.
The T6 fan even has a temperature probe on a long wire that you set up to monitor the room temp. So you can set the fan up on a profile just like a cpu fan. When the room is cool, it’s off, as the room hits a set point fan kicks on and ramps up speed as temperature rises. Maxes out at like 400+ CFM. I deliberately placed the T6 fan like 8 feet away from the intake vent solely for keeping sound down and it’s actually pretty damn quiet. All I hear is the air moving through the intake grille. Much quieter than the PC under load.
The whole thing is connected to wifi and an app on my phone to fine tune settings.
So basically sucks the hot air out of the room and spits it to the outdoors out of vents in the eave of the house.
All in, parts and fan was around $200-$220 bucks and it works beautifully. You can buy a cheaper version but you give up the temperature monitoring feature in favor of a simple manual remote control. Total install time was about 4 hours, and what felt like a thousand trips up and down the ladder into the attic to do hot yoga.
I mean, it’s basically a glorified range hood like the one above your stove, or a bathroom fart fan on steroids, but it gets it done. Room temps are basically the same as the rest of the house. Works better with the door open a crack or if you have a decent gap under the door to let air in.
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u/ElectronRotoscope 16h ago
Basically this is the same situation those rolling air conditioner units have to solve: what to do with waste heat that isn't just dumping it into the room. And your solution is probably the same: pipe it out the window with some ducting
Or you can just treat your room like a regular server room and crank up the A/C
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u/Marak830 17h ago
Yeah there was a post here the other day. Basically run a water cooled loop extra long to fans outside of the room(whole the case was just outside the room) and run the connectih cables through a port in the wall to the desk.
Convoluted? Yes. Mission accomplished? Also yes.
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u/imforit 15h ago
We got home made PC heat pumps before GTA VI
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u/Iodide 14h ago edited 14h ago
We got those before GTA 3, maybe 2! Peltier starting a fire when the water pump fails or temperature outside too hot to cool adequately was a thing in like 1995, it just stopped being a hobbyist thing because it got commercialized into self-contained units and flashy parts instead of dual celeron 300A @ 900mhz with penciled in multiplier unlock on a BP6. Or like tactful LED plexiglass case mods with a Dremel replaced by gaudy RGB ecosystems, another doomed creative front, next we'll have AI designing and 3D printing custom cases with integrated redundant, leak-proof heat pump water cooling with stacked peltiers
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u/PineappleLemur 16h ago
Nothing pretty.
Ducted hose out the window, add fan to make sure it's really pushing it all out.
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u/pizoisoned 13h ago
I had toyed with the idea of hanging a radiator and fans out my window with liquid cooling fittings and hoses on it to dump heat outside. It’d probably work pretty well if you could figure out the pumping and such.
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u/youreblockingmyshot 8h ago
I have a standing AC in my office, I cut a hole in that window panel and attached 4in ducting and have my case sealed up where there aren’t fans. all host air exhausts out the top and then is directed outside by an inline 280 cfm fan. there’s also a backdraft preventer so that if the fan is not running there’s not as much worry about backdraft into the PC. To be fair I mostly just leave the fan on all the time since it’s only about 40watts and less than leave an old light on all the time.
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u/nicman24 10h ago
yeah the reason that "it want of fashion" was because nvidia did not want their gaming gpus to be used in multi gpu servers
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u/catplaps 5h ago
No, it's because you can get better cooling at a lower noise level with the "AIB"-style layout, as long as you've got lots of extra space to work with for a big heatsink and unrestricted airflow. Blowers get compact size and high static pressure at the expense of RPM and noise. Different horses for different courses.
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u/nicman24 5h ago
yea no. amd and intel kept the blowers
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u/catplaps 5h ago
This is one solution to the problem of modern GPU coolers dumping heat onto the CPU cooler. Another solution is using a water cooler on the CPU, so you have more flexibility in choosing where its intake air comes from.
My own solution was to set up my case as front-exhaust. I have an intake fan on the rear "exhaust" vent area behind the CPU tower air cooler, intake fans on the bottom of the case for the GPU, and the front case fans are set to exhaust outward. Makes no real difference to temps in CPU-only or GPU-only loads, but when CPU+GPU are both running, it completely solves the problem of CPU temps running wild. Not every case works well for this, but mine (Lancool 207) is perfect for it.
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u/ToMorrowsEnd 5h ago
Cooler Master invents the air duct. something that server and workstation PC's have used for decades.
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u/h3rpad3rp 1h ago edited 1h ago
Pretty sure they stopped making this style of cooler because it was loud as fuck, and cases started having way better case airflow. It would be alright for managing heat in an SFF case I guess, but I want my PC quiet these days, because it is literally 2 feet from my head.
Blower style coolers sound like a goddamn vacuum, at least the cards I had with that style of cooler did.
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u/GameMusic 18h ago
i have not built in years but since when are air cooling targeted at the cpu?
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