How much do you know about graphics card heat dissipation?

As the component with the largest power consumption in computer hardware, the heat output cannot be underestimated. The quality of a video card must take into account the quality of its radiator. to judge whether the heat dissipation capability of a video card is good or bad, we mainly depend on the design type of its video card chip and radiator. What types of video card radiators are there, and which heat dissipation effects are better?

GPU is the main heat source for graphics cards. As a typical large-scale integrated circuit, the heat generated during high-speed computing is very concentrated, the chip's surface area is insufficient to provide sufficient heat exchange areas in contact with the air. This requires the radiator to be used as a heat conducting medium to expand the heat exchange area of the chip, the heat exchange is accelerated by adding a fan to achieve the purpose of heat dissipation.

Based on the known basic theory, we can draw a conclusion that the heat dissipation effect of the video card radiator is mainly determined by the following three factors: heat conduction rate of the radiator, actual heat dissipation area, and air flow rate. Now let's take a look at the differences between different types of radiators.

This type of radiator is the simplest type of radiator. Just like its name, the radiator body uses the whole metal for processing, and then installs the fan for assistance. The processing cost of this type of radiator is low, but the whole piece of metal cannot process too dense fins, so that the actual heat dissipation area of the overall color of the radiator is very limited, indirectly limiting the heat dissipation performance of the radiator.

There are also a variety of cutting shapes, such as parallel fin like a grid, there are also radial round fin, but the thickness of the fin are thick, a small number, the overall cooling area is limited. The metal block cutting radiator is common in the early graphics card. Now, after the processing technology is improved, only a few graphics cards with smaller heat can be used. For this type of radiator, the larger the radiator, the larger the heat dissipation area, the better the heat dissipation effect.

This type of radiator generally uses a combination of copper base and Aluminum Fins. The main advantage of this combination is the application of the fins, which greatly enhances the actual heat dissipation area. At the same time, because the fin and the base are also connected through welding, the direction of the fin is not too complex, usually made into a straight line air duct, in combination with a turbine fan with a large wind pressure, a structure is formed to directly discharge heat from the chassis.

However, this layout also has a disadvantage, because the base is smaller than the PCB, so the range of the fin can only be limited within the base, the actual heat dissipation area is still limited. Basically, this type of radiator can be seen on the flagship public graphics card of several generations, because it is not only simple in design, at the same time, the turbine fan + a large-area fin can also meet the cooling needs of general public version graphics card users.

This is the heat sink model used by the vast majority of video cards on the market. The reason why this is so popular is inseparable from its low-cost cooling effect. It is characterized by a combination of heat pipes and fins. In this mode, the fin is larger than the previous one, and because the heat conduction is carried out through the heat pipe, the shape and size limits of the fin are also weakened.

 

The thickness of the fin is very thin. Generally, aluminum is used as the material, and some even process many protruding points on the fin to further increase the heat dissipation area. At the same time, the heat pipe heat transfer efficiency is much higher than the pure aluminum heat transfer efficiency, the heat pipe is not sensitive to the Length Change of the video card level, through the special fin process, the core heat can be quickly transferred to the aluminum fin, and then taken away by the fan.

This type of radiator is usually equipped with a general underblown fan, because the heat dissipation area is large, so the air flow speed does not need to be too large, so the fan speed is reduced to a certain extent, reduces the noise produced by the radiator fan.

For this type of radiator, the more advanced the heat pipe, the larger the area of the fin, the larger the size of the fan. For example, the performance of a three-fan radiator is generally better than that of a Two-fan.
How heat pipes workIn fact, the heat pipe is to set a capillary porous suction core on the inner wall of a closed copper tube. At the same time, the heat pipe also takes time to lower atmospheric pressure, and finally enters the coolant with a low boiling point and volatile content. When one end of the heat pipe is heated, the coolant will evaporate into a gas and move to other locations of the heat pipe. After cooling to a certain temperature, the coolant will condense into a liquid on the tube wall, finally, through the capillary action of the suction core, the system restreams back to the heated area. A heat pipe can be regarded as a separate heat dissipation system. Its working method is similar to that of the compressor used by refrigerators and air conditioners, and has a high heat transfer efficiency, generally, the heat pipe thickness is proportional to its heat dissipation capacity.

In fact, the working principle of the average hot plate is the same as that of the heat pipe, but the cylindrical copper tube is flattened into a plate. Similar to the heat pipe that transmits heat from the heating end to the cooling end, the heating plate can quickly transmit the heat from one point or part of the plane to the whole plane.
Although the size of the water-cooled headers is very small, the main component of the water-cooled system has a much larger heat dissipation area than the general graphics card, because the size of the water-cooled layout itself does not have to be limited by the video card size, therefore, it is equipped with a larger fan size, which can achieve a much greater air flow speed than the graphics card fan at the same speed.

The pipeline and water-cooled liquid in the water-cooled system are very similar to the heat pipe in the above two types of radiators. The main task is to bring the heat absorbed by the core to the actual heat sink component-water-cooled arrangement, in addition, this process is not as passive as the heat pipe, but is actively carried out through the role of a water pump, which is relatively more efficient.

As the heat dissipation method used in the extreme frequency, these three parameters cannot be used for measurement. Liquid Nitrogen will directly evaporate at room temperature to absorb huge heat, in this way, the graphics card is cooled to a low temperature of about 200 degrees Celsius, and an ice armor layer is even formed on the surface of the video card.

This article mainly hopes to give players a perceptual knowledge of different radiators when selecting video cards, because it is impossible to directly understand the actual working effect of a video card radiator.

Edit/flying soy sauce http://www.ziq8.com/yingjian/201429/134_2.html