Intel security flaw affects the performance up to 30%

There are new security patches for Windows and Linux kernel affecting the x86 cpus. It seems that hardware security flaw in Intel CPUs allows some programs to read other parts of the memory not used by them allowing to copy data from other programs  even passwords and accounts.

This new security fix comes at the price of reduced performance up to 30% depending on the program. In the same time AMD are trying to exclude their processor from this patch because their processors doesn't have this issue.



Sources: Techpowerup

Raja Koduri leaves AMD to join Intel.

A surprising news was confirmed by Intel the chief architect of Radeon technology group part of AMD Raja Koduri is joining Intel to lead their newly formed Core and Visual Computing Group. It seems that Intel want to get piece of the graphics pie. They have such graphics unit from before but it looks now that they want to spend some money and get results. Its not sure that they will start to develop product line from zero or they will continue based on their old work, but only the future will shows us what will hapen. Even if they take decision to start from zero Intel is big company and the can afford it. But if after few years they dont make good sales maybe some of the holders will be unhappy.
So lets wait for more new from intel

Two new high clock speed CPUs from Intel

There are rumors for two new CPUs from Intel Core i5-7640K and Core i7-7740K. They are expected to be positioned over the current leaders i5-7640K and i7-7700K. With 100 MHz higher base clock frequency i7-7740K will have 4.3 GHz base and 4.6 GHz boost clock. For the i5-7640K the clock will be 200 MHz higher or that means 4GHz base clock and 4.4 GHz boost clock.

The higher clock rate will mean higher TDP so the TDP of the i7-7740K will be 100 W instead of 91W. Probably it will come with the same CPU cooler.

Intel is trying to offer something more for the upcoming battle with the expected to be good AMD Ryzen CPUs.

First pictures of reference GTX 1080

There are some new pictures of the reference model of GTX 1080 video card which official sales starts at 27 of May. The guys from VideoCardz.com showed the first pictures of the GTX 1080 and it's PCB and heat sink.


It seems that the graphical chip GP104 is smaller than its predecessor GM204. This is cause its build on smaller 16 nm production process. This also means less heat dissipation and as seen on the board it has only one power connector and the official TDP is 180W.

The last thing is the shape of the heat sink cover, it looks like the one showed on the pictures we saw before.  So they weren't photoshopped. It will be good too see what are the work temperature of the reference model and is there any space for overclock.

NVIDIA GTX 1080 information leaked

There is some information leaked about the new NVIDIA GTX 1080. Here is picture with the new GPM104 chip from the new Nvidi Pascal series. The chip model on the picture is GPM104-400-A1 which is the full version of the upcoming top Pascal series. There are 8 modules of GDDR5X RAM which shows 8 GB RAM and probably 256bit bus. Info from - videocardz.com

GPM104 with 8 RAM modules

There is no sure information how the videocard will look. But a week before another picture leaked on the web showing the new GTX 1080. Ofc maybe it was Photoshopped or something but it can give idea how the heat sink looks and the what is the heat sink shape. Nothing new, just some modified 980/titan look.

GTX 1080

Sandia, Cooler Master and CoolChip Kinetik rotating heatsink CPU cooler.

The begin: Sandia rotating heat sink cooler

Back in 2010. Sandia announced their research on air bearing rotating heat sink cooler.

The rotating heat sink

Sandia rotating heat sink cooler. 

As you can see this is very interesting cooler. The ordinary coolers consist of static heat sink and fan. Here you can see something else, the heat sink itself has a shape of centrifugal fan and it's rotating! It function both heat sink and fan in the same time. Now what makes this setup so interesting is that it is dust proof. Many of you have seen heat sink completely clogged by thick layer of dust looking like fabric.

clogged heat sink

The fan also becomes dusty but it's moving and it just can't keep so much dust. So in this case when the heat sink is rotating it can become little dusty but it can't be clogged. And this mean easier maintenance. And stable performance in time, without performance drop when the heat sink is becoming too dusty.

The air bearing.

But a question raises how the heat from the heat source will transfer to the heat sink? The answer is simple - air bearing.

Sandia cooler summary

When the air gap is very small and the fan is rotating at high speed the air in the gap is moving as well and thus giving very small thermal resistance in order of  0.02 °C/W(check the . file in the link under the image). The smaller the gap the better, here we talk about 0.001″ air gap.
So basically, when the air gap is very small the fast moving air is hitting the hot base plate, get heated itself and after this it hit the heat sink transferring the heat to the heat sink. Because the same air is moving fast towards the heat sink too.

The reduced boundary layer

The boundary layer is effect in the physics where an air moving near surface has slower speed than air at greater distance.

Thermal boundary layer

As Sandia labs state "The centrifugal pumping effect eliminates 90% of the insulating boundary layer (“dead air”) enveloping the cooling fins". It means that even the air near the fins caught by the boundary layer get pushed out. Because the centrifugal force is working on it no matter that is it in the boundary layer.(Just simple and not exactly correct explanation but it pretty much means this)

Quieter operation

The increased effectiveness and the reduced amount directly transfer to reduced noise, actually the fact that here we have only fan and not fins behind fan and huge amount of air that needs to pass through it eliminates a lot of the noise.

The MIT reward issue: CoolChip $200K Clean Energy Prize

In 2011 there were a fuse about a CoolChip Technology that won the MIT Clean Enery Prize competition. Soon after the reward being granted a lot of people asked the question "Hey. Isn't this the sandia cooler?" putting MIT in uncomfortable situation. They couldn't easy say that they have made mistake and besides CoolChip already got the money. Fortunately for them CoolChip and Sandia didn't go in lawsuit but settle the things out of the court by CoolChip agreeing to point the intellectual property of Sandia in a proper way. This allowed to MIT to announce later that CoolChip now properly reference the inventor of the technology and that now they are within the rules.

Back then I was hoping to see CPU cooler made by the Sandia technology but it seems that I had to wait.

The Partnership: Cooler Master and CoolChip work together

Now 4 years later, a little bit by accident I found a video about the new Cooler Master and CoolChip Kinetic cooler. It seems that CoolChip hasn't drop the idea for the kinetic cooler but give the OEM to Cooler Master which have very good experience and know how of the cooling technologies.

For example Cooler Master have experience in producing vapor chambers for the base plate which is the initial design idea by Sandia.
Now the prototypes are still in pre-alfa states. they don't implement vapor chambers. There are two models. One for small CPUs and the other one for big cores. They are not giving exact information how much Watts of power the cooler can handle. And like I said there is still no vapor chamber on the small one it just have base plate made from aluminum.

Model of the smaller kinetic cooler

The big one however doesn't have vapor chamber but it has heat pipes and small heat sink attached to them around the rotating heat sink of the cooler.

3D model of the bigger kinetic cooler

The heat pipes and their mounting helps spreading out the temperature around the base plate, they also together with their fins helps utilizing the airflow already produced by the rotating kinetic cooler. However despite the fact that maybe this build have better thermal properties, I don't like it since it is loosing the main advantage of the rotating heat sink and this is the dust proof capabilities.

Now these static fins will collect dust like before, and they will be harder to clean because you cant remove the fan. So for me this is just something that they want to show, and not so practical, unless of course you are not looking for low profile cooler. And of course the smaller one doesn't have such problems.

Lets move to the next point - the air-gap.

This schematic is shown on CoolChip website. Please pay attention that the base plate is not actually flat but it has this circular pattern shape shown on the picture in order to increase the surface of the air gap that transfer the heat.

Base plate contact surface shape

In this way they can increase the heat transferring surface between the two discs few times. The more cylinders you have the more surface you got. But when I look at their prototype they are using CNC machines to produce their prototypes and they are limited by the material properties and the cutting tool properties itself.

The fins shape

CoolChip fins

Now if you look at the sandia first prototype in the begin of the page it has the same fin number coming from the center and leading to the end. Maybe it has better flow properties but the guys from CoolChip wanted to increase the surface. So they used this trick, they have made the fins with the same thickness without thicker part but instead in the outer part of the circle where the there is more space they added second row of fins. I doubt that this increase the airflow but for sure it increase the surface.

Noctua presents three new compact CPU coolers.

Three new compact CPU coolers from Noctua.

Noctua is presenting three new coolers from the NH-U9 series. All these coolers are compact sizes with 92mm fan. With the compact size of the NH-U9 coolers there are no problem with the RAM compatibility. The cooler is small and fit in smaller PC cases.
There are two desktop models NH-U9S and NH-D9L. And the server model NH-U9X i4 3U for xeons.

The models will offer again a good cooling performance and low noise. And also 6 years warranty with MTFB rating of 150000 hours work.

The most interesting of these three coolers is the S models witch has asymmetric heat-sink. The result of this asymmetric heat sink build is that when the fan is mounted the shape of the heat sink plus fan is almost square looked from top. And the result is that the cpu cooler is keeping high surface that allow the heat to dissipate. Its avoiding situations when the fan is touching something in a limited space and this isn't coming at the price of reduced heat sink size.

Their price will be 59.90$