MSI Creates Self Cleaning GPU's

This is so common sense that it's hard to consider innovative, but it's about damn time. This definitely needs to be incorporated into laptops.

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it's cool, but the problem is where would the dust go?

 

Into the system where the other fans would hopefully push it out.

The thing is that most laptops don't have cards or even dedicated fans, they have chips on the motherboards and a heatsink that is often shared with the CPU.

 

Very cool thanks for the link +rep

 

I can see this failing easily.

 

Well, the thing is, if it does that every time the system starts or every time the fans spin up, then hopefully there's not a lot of dust in there. Excellent idea.

 

It would pull all the dust up into the motor housing for the fan. Unless they've sealed it then it could lead to the bearing failing or the whole thing just gumming up.

 

Bloody great idea.

 

Highly highly highly unlikely. I've seen fans that had dust bunnies bigger than the Easter Bunny that kept on going. And if it did it on a regular basis, it would never get that bad. Just like cleaning your house. Do a little on a daily basis, it doesn't look so bad, wait a couple weeks, well, you reap what you sew.

 

How would this fail easily?

Wow, I want the fans in my M15x to do that. I wonder how effective it would be, if it were even possible.

 

Yes, but its a poor substitute for actually opening up your machine and cleaning it diligently, properly.

Personally, I would avoid this.

Mr. Mysterious

 

The Llama is right.

The reason why this is fail is because it blows the dust into your case, and you need some good huge fans to make the dust come out of the case once the GPU has cleaned itself.

I have better idea, why not make it that the GPU has it's own plug which you can put into the wall and then you can activate the automatic cleaner.

You can't blame MSi for trying though.

 

My impression of MSI gets better all the time.
Hard to believe not too long ago, I thought of them as producing low-end, budget products.

 

Man, tough crowd. I like the idea. Dust goes up and out the back fan vent (in the case of a desktop). Not hard to contemplate.

 

If one drops two grand on a gaming laptop, one must be prepared for the personal responsibility of maintaining it.

It's like buying a ferrari and driving it off roads. Nope.

You're right though, msi has the right idea.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Hell, all I ever do is use a few squirts of compressed air every three months and I'm good. No significant dust bunnies. My desktop is another story though. It sits on the floor in the corner of a room always on and have to clean that sucker out every couple weeks.

 

Good implementation nonetheless, but I wouldn't call it a breakthrough. I mean, they just reversed the direction of rotation for the cooling fans, thus reversing the airflow and sucking out the dust.

I'm quite surprised this has not been implemented earlier. I'm not a desktop expert and this is just my opinion, but even the colour change on those fans when the temp goes above 45 degrees seems more "innovative".

 

This shows how the simple ideas are often the best.

 

Right idea, but a rather crude one at best.

 

Again, tough crowd. I think it's great that they use what's existing. I mean they could have come up with a $100 contraption. Instead with just a little stroke of brilliance they just used what existed. I like it. I guess all you nay-sayers would rather have their $300 GPU overheat than blow a little extra dust in the system that would dissipate and vent out the back.

I don't see this happening in a laptop though.

 

Mine doesn't overheat.
Besides, I like opening up my laptop once every 6 months to do manual cleaning.

As I said, the idea is a crude one at best.
If they create a much better system though, then I would be for it... but in it's current state...

 

Ok, since I understand now (without watching the video) that this is for desktops. I'm sorry, but there is just no substitute for manual cleaning. A good vacuuming every couple of weeks is all you need.

 

This is pretty cool....but personally, I'd like to see them move away from fans. Moving parts are susceptible to failure, and now that we're getting into SSD's, the only moving parts left will be ODD and Fans. There's got to be a breakthrough in passive cooling tech around the corner I hope (besides an entire laptop made from copper).

 

Until CPU's and GPU's can run at <5W each there will be no passive cooling tech unless it's just one giant heatsink. Fans are moving parts but with proper bearings they can last a long, long, long, long time, and are usually inexpensive and easy to replace (at least on a desktop). They should make them more easily serviceable in laptops though. Usually you have to replace the entire fan/heatsink/heatpipe assembly which can be costly.

I still don't get the negative vibe here on this tech though. It's a freebie that does more than it did before. Free bonus. It's like complaining because their vacuum cleaner can also blow air instead of suck, but costs the same as the ones that can only suck.

 

In a desktop, this creates the issue of "where is the dust going to go?"... If the dust is blown out of the fan blades, are they going to get blown into the PSU, into the CPU fan, on to the mother board, etc... I definitely like the idea, but I don't know how well it will work... There is nothing better than pulling off the cover of your computer case and blowing it out with some compressed air.

On a laptop, this would be a great addition to the laptop case fans as it would allow you to blow out some of the dust that is collecting around the intakes. But even on a lappy, nothing beats some compressed air to get rid of the dust.

 

So they sprinkled some dust on it and show it magically blowing away simply by spinning the fans in reverse. I don't think it's that simple. Dust that accumulates on stuff isn't just gently resting on the surface, you need a lot of pressure (canned air) or mechanical means to really clean it off well. It might prevent huge wads of dust from accumulating, but it won't eliminate the need for periodic maintenance.

 

Dust isn't going to accumulate if you do this every startup. Yeah, you'll need to clean it, but there's no reason not to do this.

 

That's because the air was going forward through it. If you look at the back of most PC fans (where the port is located so you can lubricate the bearing), you will see that there is a gap between the two componants which directly exposes the motor and all the internals. The fans are designed so that with forward airflow the dust will not go in that gap, however if you reverse the direction then it could quite easily lead to it forcing dust into the motor.



What I'm interested in doing is modifying the air pathway through the heatsink. In standard ATI cards with the "batmobile" cooler, the air pathway is perfectly straight. If the vanes were wavy instead of straight then due to centrifugal force and simply changing direction, there would be much higher air pressure on the vanes. We all know about the boundry layer in heatsinks, this can be made significantly smaller by increasing the air pressure (one of the reasons why high flow fans work well, besides them simply pushing more cooling medium through). Due to the increased local pressure the boundry layer should be reduced and so the air can more effectively cool the fins.

There are two downsides I can see to this though. Firstly it would provide more resistance to airflow vs a straight path. Secondly it couldn't simply be made from extruded aluminium, it would most likely have to be milled.

 

Like HTWingNut, I am completely boggled about why people see this as a horrible idea. Personally, I think having to completely disassemble my laptop (with very breakable parts) and spend money on $8 cans of air is a horrible idea. Keeping my desktop clean is damn near impossible; I have to clean and blow it out once a month. I've only cleaned my laptop once in the past 2 years because completely disassembling/reassembling it is a nightmare.

There is no reason PC and Laptop manufacturers can't make a few minor changes to their designs and have our components perform some preventative cleaning.

 

Good points everyone. However, it might be effective on a desktop. This is a notebook forum

Mr. Mysterious

 

On a laptop, this is 95% guaranteed fail.

 

I don't see it as a horrible idea. In fact it's a great idea and there's no reason why the fans shouldn't do this already. I just don't see it making that much of a difference, and I think the video was an overdramatization.

 

Quite a lot, I do agree. If dust would always accumulate like that (that is: always small particles of dust) then it would work well, but I'm not sure how efficient it would be with the 'thicker' dust.

 

If it did this daily you would never accumulate dust and would never see it being blown out. That's the entire point of the idea!! And how can this idea not find its way into laptops? Surely it will take a few chasis and design changes to accommodate, but those would be damn simple.

 

Exactly. It's like dusting your house on a regular basis. Do it frequently there won't be much dust to "cause problems". Wait six months, well, it's gonna be thick and gross.