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$

Black CPU coolers - 2014

Black CPU coolers

Why black CPU coolers?

Because they are "cool" :). There are plenty of good looking CPU coolers on the market. And while CPU coolers and the heat sinks are not the most important part of the PC. For sure they are the most impressive parts when its come to the view and the way they look. I decided to make small list of the current available CPU coolers grouped by color . The list will include the major brands and there will be pictures included.

Black CPU coolers list for 2014.

1. Xigmatek Dark Knight - SD1283 Night Hawk Edition.

Ximatec official web page.

Xigmatek Dark knight CPU cooler - Black Hawk Edition.

What is the special thing for this CPU cooler is the black paint on the heat sink. Actually this is special ceramic coating which Xigmatek claims to remove the heat away faster from the heat sink. Or with their own words "Special formulated ceramic coating with stealth technology for ultimate heat dispensing. This innovative composite coating is specially designed to conduct heat away from its source rapidly and dispense it extremely fast without leaving any trace on the surface."
Its true that you cant use any paint for heat sinks. Because if the paint is temperature insulator it will actually stop the heat. So OK they have use their special paint formula.

But there is also another  thing which is curious. Actually the black surface radiate heat better than the reflecting white surfaces. And the mirror polished surfaces has the least temperature radiation coefficient. Here is a list of some common materials and paints temperature radiation coefficients: basically it shows that rough surfaces has better emissivity than the mirror polished surfaces.
OK So we have black mat paint but will this help much? This is good CPU cooler this is true. But it use fan to blow air and it removes the heat away by convection not by radiation. Isn't this so special coating just extra added value which wont make much difference from normal barbeque paint for example. Well the important thing is that it looks "cool".

Xigmatek HDT- Heat-pipe Direct Touch Technology.

Next thing about this cooler is the direct touch technology or with other words. The heat pipes are bended and grinded in such way that they touch the CPU directly this also should help the CPU cooling. Also they use three 8 mm heat pipes instead of 6 mm like most CPU coolers. And they say that the 3x8 mm is better than 4x6 mm. I have seen this on one of mine CPU coolers - Enzotech extreme-x rev.a It has 4x8mm heat pipes and on the online reviews it topped the down-facing CPU-coolers so I guess its true - the thicker heat-pipes conduct better than the thinner heat-pipes. And some top CPU coolers also use 8 mm.

2. Prolimatech black Megahalems.

Prolimatech ofers nice top tower CPU coolers that are painted black. Actually the Megahalems models comes in three special edition models with red, blue and black color.

This heat sink comes with six heat-pipes 6 mm thick.

It comes with different back plates for different sockets allowing mounting on any system.
It doesn't come with fans. You  have to choose the fans by yourself. The fan clips allow to mount two 12 or 14 cm fan for push-pull configuration. And for sure this fan looks really nice. Cool, big and awesome.

2.1 Prolimatech black Genesis and Armageddon Blue Series

Two more CPU coolers from Prolimatech comes in black color. It seems that they have seen the need of such products on the market. Since like already said - the CPU cooler is not the most important part of the PC but for sure is the most impressive.

Black Genesis Series

Black Genesis CPU cooler is one strange cooler with its shape. But it offers cooling not only of the CPU but also on the RAM and the whole mother board. It has one flaw... its kinda big and you will need good big PC case to be able to mount it.

Armageddon Blue Series

Well its name says "Blue" But blue is just a small touch on the whole heat-sink so I decided to add it to the list.

3. BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 3.

Now this is product from BeQuite! company and they pay special attention not only to the performance but to the noise levels too. The name of the CPU cooler really match its look. With weight of 1.197 kg its one pretty big cooler.

BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 3

 Coming with 7 heat-pipes which done end in one line ass seen on the picture bellow it looks really nice. Also the back side of the Heat-sink is with crossed sections which also should reduce the noise. This makes the outer look of the cooler even better.

Dark Rock Pro 3 back side.

It comes with two fans 120 mm outside fan and 135 mm inner fan. It looks more like push-push configuration than push-pull configuration. It also support 3rd fan with the fan clips coming with the box.

Side view of Dark Pro 3. 

Quiet fanless CPU cooler - Silverstone Heligon HE02

The fanless CPU cooler!

The fanless SPU coolers are something very interesting. They need to pull away the heat from the CPU and to dissipate it in the surrounding air and all this without a fan that blow the heat away!
To achieve this goal the fanless CPU coolers need few things:

1st Huge surface that dissipate the heat.

Few things determinate the heat transfer, the surface, the bigger is better, the airflow, higher speed airflow is better, and the temperature difference between the heated object and the air.

So the huge surface is must have in a fanless design because there is missing the artificial airflow from the fan. as you can see on the picture:

Silverstone Heligon HE02 CPU cooler

As you can see there are a lot of fins increasing the surface - helping the heat transfer.
There are also 6 heat pipes that transfer the heat from the cpu to every single fin, even the last one.

2nd Big size of the CPU cooling tower

Because there is no fan attached, the big size of the cooler helps to take the heat far away from the CPU where it can be spread without heating the CPU back or keeping the cooler at higher temperature.
Here are the sizes of the cooler:

Silverstone Heligon HE02 dimensions

3rd A little bit surprisingly but.... Airflow!

Surprisingly but the heat sink still needs and airflow to spread the heat in the air. But here is the tricky part.
The Heligon HE02 is counting on natural convection of the air to take the heat away. And the natural convection is not very powerful. In order to ensure enough airflow - the heat sink is made with large space between the fins compared to the CPU coolers with fan. In this way its easier for the air to move through the fins.
Of course this mean that on same size you can put less number of fins that's why the Silverstone decided to make the fins with bigger surface. As you can see on the picture above with the dimensions the cooler is wider that its taller with 170 x 130 mm wide and 160 mm - tall this is pretty much one big cubic chunk of copper and aluminium!

Specifications of Heligion HE02

Dimension: 170mm(W) x 130mm(D) x 160mm (H)

CPU TDP: Fanless 95W (varies depending on chassis airflow)
                  Fanless with 120mm fan in case > 900rpm - 150W
                  1 x 120mm fan – over 150W

Sockets:     Intel Socket LGA775/1150/1155/1156/1366/2011
                  AMD Socket AM2/AM3/FM1/FM2

As you can see even fanless it can cool up to 95W TDP CPUs - these are Anything bellow Intel i5 and for AMD below FX-6300 or FX-4300
If there is one 120mm fan in the PC case. The TDP jumps to 150W. This mean that if there is one 120mm fan located near the cooler that helps the airflow you can cool i7 or FX-8xxx.
If you attach one fan to the heat sink itself you can use this cooler to overclock CPUs with power over 150W!