Maglev fan touted at Intel bash

ONE OF THE nice things about roaming around the vendor showcase at IDF is seeing the little things no one ever tells you about. There were a bunch of those at this IDF, two of which were standouts. The first was a Hitachi watercooling system. This is no normal enthusiast waterblock, it is a custom fitted system for a 1U server.

It can be tailored to any system you care to use it for, and will cover not only CPUs, but any other heat source in the machine.

The construction appeared to be high quality, with single piece copper tubing running most places, and fairly beefy connectors in between. The tubes had the look of high quality mandrel bends rather than cheaper methods.

The literature touts five years, and has leak detection and other features. You wouldn't want that nasty antifreeze all over your server innards now would you? Because it is a custom system, it probably would have to be packaged with your computer rather than something you can buy off the shelf. All this from Hitachi. Who knew?

The other one that caught my eye is Sunon. It had a big sign touting Maglev fans. Rather than a motor, shaft, and the associated noise, the Sunon fans magnetically levitate the rotating parts. It claims lower noise, more precision, and just about better everything. I wasn't able to play with one during the show, and can't say much more than the fact that they do indeed spin.

If I can find out who to write, and it gives me some, I will report on it. Otherwise, the idea sure sounds cool doesn't it? When the twits at the next LAN party boast about the LED colors in their case fans, you can laugh and tell them that yours magnetically levitates. Instant entry into the ranks of the real geek power club.

Lastly, there is no other place to put this, but it is really cool anyway, so I will put it in. Here is the display from the Intel Desktop Cooling Solutions stand.

Intel had tons of displays in various states of assembly. Enjoy. There were some Tejas coolers around the show, but since they didn't have a heavily supported display case, they could not be shown. We already showed a photo of a Molex one, here. µ