About Reference Coolers...

[Dash Lambda]

This is something I've been confused about for a while: Why exactly do Nvidia and AMD (with only a couple of exceptions) continue to make blower-style reference coolers?

 

I understand that blower coolers are less dependent on the case they're in for cooling and so they're more consistent and they'll also have less of an effect on the cooling of other components and blah blah blah blah...

But that seems like a pretty stupid reason. They may be consistent, but they're consistently mediocre and loud..

 

Hell, they could make half the marketing about how it uses a "Revolutionary High-Performance Ultra-Quiet Twin-Fan Cooler!" or something like that. It would be an easy selling point.

... So, why don't they?

[Jack Dvorak]

I've been wondering the same thing. Why don't they do dual fans at least.

[berserker]

its it cheaper for them maybe ?

[shadowbyte]

because they look cool af

[Gullerback]

its hilariously cheap

[Techicolors]

3 minutes ago, Dash Lambda said:

Hell, they could make half the marketing about how it uses a "Revolutionary High-Performance Ultra-Quiet Twin-Fan Cooler!" or something like that. It would be an easy selling point.

i don't think NVIDIA wants to do that. 3rd party OEMs will already do that for them. 

 

 

[RollinLower]

because blower style coolers are;

1. cheaper to fabricate

2. selling points in their own right (think SFF chassis)

3. plain a nessesity when doing something along the lines of server use.

 

also, they have kind of become a 'classic'. especially with Nvidea's 'founder edition' cards.

[aisle9]

1. Cheaper to make

2. Fills a niche (aside from reference coolers, I can only think of a handful of blower designs out there)

3. Looks BA AF in NVIDIA's case. Looks ok AF in AMD's.

4. Creates a "trademark" design. I mean, an open-style reference NVIDIA cooler would look a whole lot like EVGA's ACX 3.0. AMD's reference cooler would be virtually indistinguishable from an MSI card. By going with the less and less common blower style, the big two have created an image for reference coolers, and it's not something they're likely to give up.

[Dash Lambda]

17 minutes ago, Technicolors said:

i don't think NVIDIA wants to do that. 3rd party OEMs will already do that for them. 

But why not do it themselves as well?

 

9 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

because blower style coolers are;

1. cheaper to fabricate

2. selling points in their own right (think SFF chassis)

3. plain a nessesity when doing something along the lines of server use.

1: Are they really cheaper? I feel like a full aluminum body would add more cost than an extra fan and a bigger block of fins. (If cost really is the issue, that makes the "FE" markup even more insulting.)

2: Sure, it is a selling point, but to far fewer people. AIB's have all their variants, but Nvidia has one card. Seems like they would want to sell it to as many people as possible.

3: Sure, but what does that have to do with gaming cards?

 

Just now, aisle9 said:

1. Cheaper to make

2. Fills a niche (aside from reference coolers, I can only think of a handful of blower designs out there)

3. Looks BA AF in NVIDIA's case. Looks ok AF in AMD's.

4. Creates a "trademark" design. I mean, an open-style reference NVIDIA cooler would look a whole lot like EVGA's ACX 3.0. AMD's reference cooler would be virtually indistinguishable from an MSI card. By going with the less and less common blower style, the big two have created an image for reference coolers, and it's not something they're likely to give up.

1: See above.

2: I address this partly above, but also: I think that, if reference coolers were suddenly not blower-style, several AIB's would get their foot into that niche.

3: I really don't understand you people. Their old coolers, sure... But the new ones? How are those anything but cringe-inducing?

4: It's easy to make open coolers look different. And I don't think the image is really that important when your product is widely criticized.

[Techicolors]

45 minutes ago, Dash Lambda said:

But why not do it themselves as well?

like i said, 3rd party OEMs make their own cooler and thermal designs, so NVIDIA has little incentive to change their blower cooler. when you think of it that way, it is why NVIDIA won't allow 3rd parties to apply their own magic with the Titan XP. NVIDIA wants to keep the titan to themselves, but the shroud itself can be removed and watercooled. 

[Dash Lambda]

1 minute ago, Technicolors said:

Like i said, 3rd party OEM's make their own cooler and thermal designs, so NVIDIA has little incentive to change their blower cooler. When you think of it that way, it is why NVIDIA won't allow 3rd parties to apply their own magic with the Titan XP. NVIDIA wants to keep the Titan to themselves, but the shroud itself can be removed and watercooled.

But blower coolers have inherently inferior performance, so that's less enticing to people to buy. Nvidia's selling a product.

[aisle9]

42 minutes ago, Dash Lambda said:

But why not do it themselves as well?

 

1: Are they really cheaper? I feel like a full aluminum body would add more cost than an extra fan and a bigger block of fins. (If cost really is the issue, that makes the "FE" markup even more insulting.)

2: Sure, it is a selling point, but to far fewer people. AIB's have all their variants, but Nvidia has one card. Seems like they would want to sell it to as many people as possible.

3: Sure, but what does that have to do with gaming cards?

 

1: See above.

2: I address this partly above, but also: I think that, if reference coolers were suddenly not blower-style, several AIB's would get their foot into that niche.

3: I really don't understand you people. Their old coolers, sure... But the new ones? How are those anything but cringe-inducing?

4: It's easy to make open coolers look different. And I don't think the image is really that important when your product is widely criticized.

A couple of thoughts:

 

1. The FE pricing has turned out to more or less be a floor for the 1070 and, especially, the 1080, although prices seem to be coming down (I paid $400 for my 1070). Perhaps there was some winking and nudging going around between NVIDIA and the AIB partners that the "Founder's Edition" premium would actually be a starting price early on. AMD had much the same dynamic with the 480, and finding one at MSRP is still tough.

 

2. There's another reason that I think we both missed as to why reference coolers, at least on NVIDIA's side, are blowers. NVIDIA's focus is on the GPU itself. The reference cooler is an afterthought for them in all likelihood, because they probably don't employ entire teams of designers focused solely on the reference cooler. AIBs are handed a GPU, then turn their teams of designers who do nothing but design coolers day in and day out. Simply put, making a blower-style cooler insulates NVIDIA a bit from criticism about its design. By releasing an uncommon blower type that's generally viewed as inferior, they don't really have to compete against their AIBs. That's good, because...oh, hey, I have another reason below...

 

3. NVIDIA doesn't want to compete with its AIBs. NVIDIA does not have the ability to design and manufacture hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of graphics cards from the ground up with every passing generation. That's what the AIBs are for. NVIDIA creates the chip, puts out their founder's edition that's clocked like crap and has a turd of a cooler but looks cool as hell, then steps aside and lets the AIBs do their thing. If NVIDIA were to put out a cooler as good as, say, ACX 3.0 or Windforce and strap it to a factory overclocked GPU, how long do you think even EVGA would stick around before giving NVIDIA the finger and hiring a few guys who know AMD hardware inside out? That was the whole logic behind the Founder's Edition: NVIDIA wanted a card of its own in the market, but they didn't want to piss off their AIBs by entering into competition with them, so they reached into the hat at random to get their silicon, slapped it onto a crappy cooler without bothering to see if it could overclock and way, way overcharged for it.

 

I think if you look back through the posts from around the time of Pascal's release, there weren't nearly as many, "YES! I got my Founder's Edition card!" comments as there were, "Crap, the only way I'm going to get one anytime soon for anything close to MSRP is to buy the stupid Founder's Edition." That's the point of the FE, imo. NVIDIA gets to sling its balls around and show off what it's done, then the AIBs get to step in and take it from there without having to worry about NVIDIA undercutting them.

[Techicolors]

2 minutes ago, Dash Lambda said:

But blower coolers have inherently inferior performance, so that's less enticing to people to buy. Nvidia's selling a product.

you don't have to buy the reference/FE edition. and even though NVIDIA sells the FE edition, they're still making a profit (the PCB and chipset came from NVIDIA after all). then you have the Titan XP, which you have to buy from NVIDIA's site

[Dash Lambda]

12 hours ago, aisle9 said:

-snip-

1: I think the pricing thing is pretty much just the result of Nvidia not thinking. They thought "Let's set our prices so high we don't compete with the AIB's" (or something more greedy), and then the AIB's said "But our cards are better..."

 

2: Ehh, I think Nvidia has a big enough team of designers to make a cooler that actually performs well. Also, I don't really understand why it would 'insulate' them from criticism... If anything, it looks like it spurs it.

 

3: Well, I can't see how Nvidia coming out with a better cooler would be much different from any of the AIB's coming our with a better cooler, so I don't think it would push any of them away...  The non-competitive thing might be a reason, but I don't think of Nvidia as being very selfless.

12 hours ago, Technicolors said:

You don't have to buy the reference/FE edition. And even though NVIDIA sells the FE edition, they're still making a profit (the PCB and chipset came from NVIDIA after all). Then you have the Titan XP, which you have to buy from NVIDIA's site.

I didn't consider that they still profit off of everyone else's cards (I knew that, but didn't think about it in this context)...

I wonder how much more they get out of the reference design, if it's any more at all...

[NavyCuda]

Technically speaking the centrifugal, also known as radial compressors are much better suited to high flow rates, high pressure differentials and don't need thrust bearings.  Blade design is very straightforward and a number of different geometries will work well.

 

Axial flow compressors can have high flow rates but they don't handle pressure differentials as well and need thrust bearings.  Blade design is crucial, the blades are only supported at the root.

 

So from an OEM standpoint the radial flow compressor is the best choice as it checks off performance and longevity with ease.

 

The main reason for a perceived performance difference is that with the axial fans there is more fresh air being applied to a larger surface area, where with radial the air is being further warmed up as it passes through the card.

 

The longest lasting fans in the world are radial and are the only kinds of fans used in forced air furnaces.

[Dash Lambda]

25 minutes ago, NavyCuda said:

-snip-

Huh. I didn't know they lasted longer.

I wonder how the lifespan of a 10-series reference cooler fan would compare to that of something like a Classy's fan...

Somehow I doubt anyone's tested that XP

[NavyCuda]

12 minutes ago, Dash Lambda said:

Huh. I didn't know they lasted longer.

I wonder how the lifespan of a 10-series reference cooler fan would compare to that of something like a Classy's fan...

Somehow I doubt anyone's tested that XP

I imagine it would be difficult to test and would require a number of samples to get a proper average lifespan and account for manufacturing defects.

 

The furnace in my house has the same fan and motor in it that it came with in the late 1970s.  My last axial floor fan lasted about 5 years before it had enough.

[Dash Lambda]

31 minutes ago, NavyCuda said:

I imagine it would be difficult to test and would require a number of samples to get a proper average lifespan and account for manufacturing defects.

 

The furnace in my house has the same fan and motor in it that it came with in the late 1970s.  My last axial floor fan lasted about 5 years before it had enough.

Well, making comparisons like that won't go very far, because product quality and engineering also matters. I'd never compare a furnace fan to a floor fan, just like I wouldn't compare a PC fan to a ceiling fan.

[NavyCuda]

28 minutes ago, Dash Lambda said:

Well, making comparisons like that won't go very far, because product quality and engineering also matters. I'd never compare a furnace fan to a floor fan, just like I wouldn't compare a PC fan to a ceiling fan.

 

It's about the best comparison I can make when the floor flan and the furnace fan do the same job, move a large mass of air.  The floor fan is about half the power of the furnace fan but it's the best axial to radial comparison I can think of at this time.

 

 

[Mick Naughty]

Well the cheap blowers are just that, cheap, for cheap people. Unless you want the cheap stuff to slap a water block on it. The Titan blower is the best looking thing for pc's since like ever. Especially the dual gpu's. They also work great, especially in sli. They also have to leave room for improvement, aka aftermarket. Just like everything else in this world.