Computer

The SSD heatsink with convection copper tubing cool?

Does all this sound like “Chinese” to you? Well, we will start from the basis that the current heatsinks and as a rule, how much they had on the motherboards is a piece of aluminum that through a thermal pad passively dissipates the heat into the air that it had in contact with. The most advanced heatsink had a heat pipe that improved heat transfer to an aluminum body that finally fulfilled this function, but what Ineo has on the market is something else that from a technical and thermodynamic point of view is a true marvel.

Ineo ICE-COLD M.2 Pure Cooper, the future of the passive heatsink?

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It is not that it is an unknown technology as such, not even in the PC sector, since what Ineo has used for its high-performance passive M.2 heatsink is nothing other than the system that had the Nofan brand for the heatsinks CPU.

But it is taken to a new level where there are several parts in the same heatsink that complement each other and that trying to remove temperature from a component such as an M.2 SSD is really something not seen until now.

We are going to try to explain it in a simple way, because it has its crumb. The heatsink is made up of 6 parts or pieces that they are complementary and that one without the other could not perform the final function of dissipating heat, so it is a complete system as a concept.

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We have a metallic structure that will house part of the referred parts and that supports the complete fixation of the system, where at the same time it also serves as a heat sink since it has a thermal pad installed right above it where it will touch the “hidden” or anterior face (as in you prefer to call) from the SSD once installed.

Next we have another thermal pad that touches the face of the M.2 SSD, something common at this point, but what this thermal pad will carry on top is a totally flat and rectangular copper cold plate, which is no longer common.

Two-phase copper heatsink

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Next, this cold plate will be in contact with an aluminum heatsink that integrates four lateral protrusions with threads that will be the ones that are screwed to the first aluminum base and that supported the structure and its rigidity.

Well, this very particular aluminum heatsink has some notches in the part of contact with the cold plate that at first we can think (and correctly) that they will obviously harm the cooling. These notches are deep, because what they include in them is the final magic of this Ineo ICE-COLD M.2 Pure Cooper.

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We are talking about a copper tube that is not a Heat Pipe, that is, it does not carry liquid inside or any type of gas, it is simply a copper tube that has been rotated and separated vertically with a greater height from the heatsink that integrates its notches. This tube that achieves a very specific shape is integrated into the notches described forming a whole, an almost perfect contact surface (now) that will need thermal paste to come into contact with the cold plate.

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The system is similar to that used by CPU cooler manufacturers with Heat Pipe direct touch and a processor IHS, where copper meets nickel and thermal paste is needed to improve heat transfer and fill imperfections that are generated in this system.

Reverse convection system

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The interesting thing here is that since it is a simple and solid copper tube, what is intended here is to use in reverse what is known as a tube bundle convection recuperator. This logically requires the largest amount of copper possible and also move it away from the heat source instead of bringing it closer. For this reason, in the upper part of the copper tubes there is no heat sink other than a decorative plate with the name of the product and no other cold plate.

The aim is to create an exchange system with the gas (air) that minimizes the pressure loss of the same due to the internal movement of the nearby fans, achieving with this particular shape that the total surface is the largest and with it the exchange capacity is maximized.

That is why heat pipes are not used, which reduces the cost of the same and achieves an even better performance, because the thermal dissipation capacity is greater. The brand assures that we will be able to go down from 10ºC to 25ºC, something that will vary depending on the internal cash flow. The only “bad” thing is that it is only available for form factor SSDs M.2 2280Fortunately, all the high-performance ones are of this type, so there is no need to worry in this regard unless due to space requirements we had to use another form factor.

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