Since the development of CPU, thermal management has always been a critical issue in IT industry. From the initial to nowadays, we can figure out the trend of power consumption for is getting higher to meet the requirement of multi-task operation. Thus, thermal solution for CPU (or GPU) has to create new ways to cool down high temperature from heat sources. In general, we can categorize thermal solution method into three ways. They are air cooling solution, heat-pipe solution and liquid solution. The illustration below is the revolution of thermal solution:

1. Air cooling:
　　 Air cooling is the basic idea to solve the thermal solution originally. It is usually made up with heat-sink and fan. Copper and Aluminum material are often used as heat conductive media. Heat-sink can be also classified by manufacturing process, including

Extrusion Heat-sink: Extrusion is defined as the process of shaping material, such as aluminum, by forcing it to flow through a shaped opening in a die. Extruded material emerges as an elongated piece with the same profile as the die opening. Example of extrusion heat-sink is as right picture.
Soldering Heat-sink: Soldering is a method of joining metal parts using an alloy of low melting point below 450 °C (800 °F). Heat is applied to the metal parts, and the alloy metal is pressed against the joint, melts, and is drawn into the joint by capillary action and around the materials to be joined by 'wetting action’. After the metal cools, the resulting joints are not as strong as the base metal, but have adequate strength, electrical conductivity, and water-tightness for many uses. Soldering technology can be applied to Copper and Aluminum material. Example of soldering heat-sink is as the reference picture.
Skived Fin Heat-sink: Skived Fin technology is the process of combing special cutting tools and a controlled shaving technique to produce heat-sink from a single block of material, such as copper or aluminum. The typical result is a thin-finned heat-sink, with a dense population of uniformly shaped and distributed fins. The most common skived fin heat-sink is from copper material.
Die-casting Heat-sink: Die-casting is the method that the metal is injected into the mold under high pressure of 10-210 Mpa (1,450-30,500) psi . This results in a more uniform part, generally good surface finish and good dimensional accuracy, as well as 0.2 % of casting dimension. For many parts, post-machining can be totally eliminated, or very light machining may be required to bring dimensions to size. This kind of process is not common to be used as the previous technology. Example of die-casting heat-sink is as the picture.

2. Heat-Pipe Cooling
　　 As we know, the total power consumption for CPU or GPU is getting higher as day goes by. Even though working temperature can be decrease by increasing the speed of fan, noise level is also another issue for most users. Therefore, the development of heat-pipe is widely used in thermal solution. A heat pipe is a heat transfer mechanism that can transport large quantities of heat with a very small difference in temperature between the hot and cold interfaces.

Heat pipes employ evaporative cooling to transfer thermal energy from one point to another by the evaporation and condensation of a working fluid or coolant. Heat pipes rely on a temperature difference between the ends of the pipe to facilitate heat transfer. However, the function of heat-pipe is limited by its length. Thus, liquid cooling solution is coming up to a new solution.

3. Liquid Cooling
　　 Liquid cooling solution is a new technology applied in thermal industry in recently year. It applies a set of cooling module to accomplish heat transmission, including pump, tank, radiator, tube and water block. The concept of liquid cooling is to bring hot water from heat source to cold area via loop circulation. The concept is illustrated blow:

Introduction of liquid cooling component
A. Pump: Pump is the heart of liquid cooling module. It starts the power to allow coolant circulated in the tube. Power consumption of pump usually affects the flow rate. Thermaltake has built new pump with the flow rate up to 500 lite/hour.
B. Radiator: Radiator is used to dissipate heat brought from hot water. It usually combined with fan so that dissipation rate will accelerate. Material of radiator can be made either by Copper or Aluminum.
C. Water block: Just as heat-sink, water block plays an important role in this thermal module. It can be made by Acrylic cover with Copper base or all Copper brazing technology.
D. Tank: It is used as reservoir to storage coolant.
E. Tube: Tube is used to connect with water block and radiator. The property of non-evaporation for tube is to guarantee coolant will not lose or evaporate during circulation.
F. Coolant: Coolant is played as a transporter of liquid from hot source to cold area. Good properties of coolant are low freezing point, high atmospheric boiling point, high flash point and non-corrosive.

According to the introduction above, we believe how to create an effective and efficient thermal solution is an important work right now. From our thermal experience in the past, we believe ITBU in Thermaltake is capable to take customer’s request to develope highly reliable solution either in air cooling or liquid cooling.