The ASUS Stack Cool system will be introduced on the following motherboards
this quarter; P5AD2 Premium/Deluxe, P5GD2 Premium/Deluxe, P5GDC Deluxe and
P5GDC-V Deluxe.
The Heatpipe Approach
Gigabyte approached the cooling of motherboard power components like the
MOSFETs from a more traditional standpoint... they built a copper heatsink for
them. The new GA-8ANXP-D (i925x) and GA-8GPNXP Duo (i915P) motherboards will be
the first two to support the U-Plus DPS. This is essentially a second generation
DPS - Gigabyte's removable 6-phase power supply which is used on its higher-end
boards - which instead of using a small 40mm fan, applies a short copper heatpipe
and cooling fins.
The U-Plus DPS takes advantage of the exhaust air from an adjacent processor
heatsink to cool itself off, and thus provides a passive means of cooling
which doesn't add any noise into the system. It remains to be seen how effective
this system will be if a heatsink is used which does not direct any airflow
towards the copper cooling fins attached to the U-Plus DPS.
The copper heatpipe and cooling fins are positioned such that they shouldn't
interfere with either the videocard or the processor heatsink. It is possible
that over-sized CPU heatsinks could pose a problem, but I think the majority of
socket 775 heatsinks should be fine. The board above is the Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D,
it is based on the Intel 925x northbridge.
RSS Newsletter
