Kinetic Coolers and What It Means for Cooling

SirTheo60 · July 7, 2016

So here's an interesting scenario. I have a CoolChip HPC (High Performance Cooler) on its way to me. This was a partnership between Coolermaster and Cool Chip to develop a kinetic air cooler. It uses no fans and instead spins the heatsink to disperse heat through the air. Some might argue it makes it an aircooler, but that like saying liquid cooling uses fans on the radiator and this instead uses a motor to turn the entire heatsink very quickly to disperse heat. I received it because a lot of computers I build are for military/ contractor applications, needing to withstand large amounts of torture testing, such as physical damage, dust, sand, extreme cold etc. Now this heatsink also has a super low profile and claims to be 2 times more efficient than the best air coolers at half the size based on its revolutionary design. That means it could be as good if not better than most liquid coolers with no risk to damage components and would be perfect for small form factor applications, maybe even better than liquid cooling for the same size. And, unlike fans, because the whole heatsink spins, it kicks of dirt and sand off of itself every time it spins. So any thoughts? Opinions? And I am sure I will post after I get some real testing done with a 4770k, 6700k and 5930k (might do a 6900k if I can get my hands on one in time).

soup · July 7, 2016

Moving items WILL fail. If you want something not to fail (well not within reasonable time spans) go for solid state every time.

I remember my first PC was cooled passively, no fans no rotating heatsinks nada. The only thing that moved was the hard drive, mind you it was a 386 processor and the mouse was on a seperate daughter board

Taswell · July 7, 2016

I worry for the bearing. that thing better be sealed or something.

SirTheo60 · July 7, 2016

It is. Apparently its rated to use for 8 years. "RATED" and actual is another thing all together. Curious to see what it will bring to the table. And I am aware of passive cooling but most of these guys want really powerful OC machines they will replace in 3-5 years and will be able to work, do geospatial stuff on and data compiling, as well as game in their off time. And we were not talking about HDDs just CPU coolers. Every rig I build is SSD.