CoolClouds Announces a New Class of Heatsinks

CoolClouds, a US-based cooling company founded by a Georgia Tech professor and a former manager of a thermal research group at Intel Labs, wants to turn the world of PC cooling upside down. In Q1 2014, CoolClouds plans to begin production on its first consumer product, SuprCool PC. The cooler is aimed squarely at overclockers and gamers aiming for the very best thermal performance. They claim the hybrid water/air heatsink will be the first on the market to cool down 300w.

They passed along a press release for your viewing pleasure:

CoolClouds, Inc. has just announced that it will introduce a new class of heat sink for high-performance desktop computing in mid Q1 2014. Pre-orders can be placed immediately at fundable.com/coolclouds. CoolClouds has developed extreme cooling solutions for the world’s leading technology companies. SuprCool-PC™, its first consumer product, will serve overclocking gamers, professionals who require peak computer performance, and anyone who uses a computer in a hot environment.

“This is a significant advance,” says CoolClouds CEO Ven Holalkere. “Heat management, and hotspots in particular, are the greatest obstacle today to increased processor power. Air-cooled heat sinks are short on power; liquid-cooled heat sinks are short on convenience. We’ve developed a hybrid that seals liquid in a self-contained module that fits easily and quietly inside your computer chassis, and that uses a patent-pending micro-channeling technology to cool the liquid as it circulates. Performance this remarkable has never before been available in a package this convenient.”

SuprCool-PC™ is the first “in chassis” heat sink to cool more than 300w in the latest Intel and AMD processors without hot spots at 65 degrees C case temperature in 25C ambient. Comparable in size to factory-installed heat sinks, it is reliable, quiet, easy to install, and effective even in high-temperature environments.

These are quite impressive claims, but we’ll have to wait and see what kind of performance this product brings. We’ll be sure to get one of these to test just as soon as they are available.

In looking through the data and information available on CoolClouds.net, I am hopeful since the firm was founded by seasoned industry veterans with experience in doing research for Intel,  IBM, Sun Microsystems and more. High profile industry experts do not come cheap, nor is it easy for them to leave their safe corporate job to enter the high-risk world of startups, so I would suspect they are very confident in their products.

There is not a ton of information about the product itself, but the specifications page does offer a 3d model and some preliminary information:

Type	Liquid-Air cooled
Fins	Aluminum
Cold Plate	Copper micro channels
Size	50 x 125 x 165 mm
Weight	800 grams
Power	12V, 0.6 amps
Noise	20 – 40 dBA
4-Pin fan	800 – 2500 rpm
Performance	300W at 65C case temp (assumes 25C ambient)
Orientation	Any, with no Degradation
Environment	-40C to 60C operational, no degradation over the temperature range
Warranty	2 years

As the press release states, you can actually pre-order the product by “backing” CoolClouds on Fundable. It’s similar to KickStarter, where users can invest in a startup by donating money and helping spread awareness.

Outperform the best heatsinks on the market at half the noise-level? Sounds great to me. I can’t wait to see whether the performance lives up to that claim. Is it possible? Discuss in the comments and stay tuned for updates on the SuprCool PC!

– Matt Ring (mdcomp)