At CES today we saw what at first resembles a Cooler Master Hyper 212+ CPU heastink and fan combo. The processor cooler features a red 120mm fan housed in a black shroud which is then attached to the heatsink itself. The heatsink is a tower design with six copper heatpipes attached to a copper CPU block. The heatpipes then lead into a tower of aluminum fins to dissipate heat.
On the back of the unit; however, there's a little something extra in the form of a nano-itx motherboard and AMD E-350 APU based on the Brazos platform. The computer is self contained and provides a number of connectivity options. For more information on the Brazos platform and E-350 APU, see our preview and review articles. A quick run down of the E-350 specifications; however, is below.
Two Bobcat CPU cores at 1.6 GHz
A Radeon HD 6310 GPU with 80 processing cores running at 500 MHz
A TDP of 18 watts
DirectX 11 Graphics and DDR3 Memory Support
The bottom of the rear of the CPU cooler is the location of the nano-ITX motherboard's rear IO panel. The motherboard features Wi-Fi, HDMI, two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, VGA(?), and e-SATA(?) connections.
It's certainly a new idea, and it will definitely hit home for people that don't need or want to run their power hungry main desktop all the time. Because the system is self contained it does present some usability issues. Mainly that you will need to have a KVM or VNC connection to control it and the inside of the computer case is going to become a lot more crowded with cables. Further, it would be a pain to have to open up the main desktop system just to plug in a flash drive or cable. On the other hand, it'd make for a nice media or file server and would not require the desktop be on 24/7 without needing yet another box crowding my desk so I'd give it a shot. (The inside of my computer case is already a mess of wires so what do I have to lose?)
What are your thoughts on this somewhat strange CPU cooler?
I suppose if the best air cooler on the market had a performance CPU integrated into the cooling design (as in CPU core directly incorporated into the base plate) it would reach the ultimate peak in efficiency if done right. But nobody would buy that since you wouldn't be able to swap CPU or cooler separately.
Another slightly more realistic idea would be for Intel/AMD to create special edition CPU's with integrated water blocks, ie. build the CPU into a high performance water block. Will never happen.
As for the article... well.. I guess there are people that will see the novelty in something like that and get it.
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