Asetek Granted Patents On Liquid Cooling Systems For GPUs In The USA

[VSG]

Would you recommend buying some water cooling parts now? Or it would be wise to wait anyways depending on the news?

No need to rush into anything, I am pretty sure some will be challenging this given the ridiculous broad claims. This mostly affects waterblocks so other than universal blocks, no point in going and buying full cover blocks now that won't fit future cards.

[OverachievingSnowfall]

If you look a little closer at the patent file, its kind of an interesting design, and has nothing to do with conventional waterblocks like what EK or XSPC or anyone else makes.  It's actually a design for a universal coldplate that attaches to a larger custom heatsink which in turn attaches to the card.  I'm guessing it's their idea of making GPU cooling more accessible.  I doubt it would perform all that well though, since there would be 2 interfaces needing TIM, and the cold plate would be much further from the GPU itself.

 

It would be pretty impossible for them to claim that conventional GPU waterblocks are the same as this, besides the fact that these conventional waterblocks have been around for 10 yrs.

 

Here's a link to the file for those of you who don't want to go searching for it:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8755179.PN.&OS=PN/8755179&RS=PN/8755179

 

I don't think we have anything to worry about.

[DildorTheDecent]

I don't see why you're worried about ek / xspc getting "forced out"  EK has a GIANT portion of the liquid cooling market, that market % won't just disappear IMO

Well think about how much a waterblock + pump + tubes + coolant would be. The a AIO admittedly would be a cheaper option but the custom solution would look far far better. There could be a small hit to the likes of EK.