In the nearest time, Thermalright is going to present TRUE Spirit 120 Direct, which is a cooling device of an average efficiency. This construction weighs around 600 g and is 120 mm long, 67 mm wide and 141 mm high. It will apparently cost less than TRUE Spirit 140 Direct models (going for approximately $47).



The heatsink of TRUE Spirit 120 Direct consists of an aluminium pressure plate, four U-shaped copper nickelized 6 mm heat pipes and tens of perforated aluminium plates. The 120 mm fan is attached to the radiator by standard wire spikes. The rotary speed of this unit is unknown yet, however, taking into account another 120 mm fan cooler (TRUE Spirit 120M BW Rev.A), we may assume it will not exceed 1,500 rpm.


It is remarkable that in the lower part the fan is located almost at the base level. Such a strange design may prove its worth in systems, including motherboards with massive, but ineffective VRM heatsinks.


The list of compatible motherboards and processors …

MSI is glad to introduce its own version of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 960 GPU. This time the company offers three graphics cards, one of which keeps an etalon design (GTX 960), whereas the other two take an original design (GTX 960 OC and GTX 960 Gaming 2G). The triple differentiates not only by external features but by operational clock frequencies as well.



The heart of all three models is Nvidia GM206 GPU with 1024 CUDA cores, 32 ROPs and 64 TMUs. MSI GeForce GTX 960 runs at 1127 MHz (nominal)/1178 MHz (dynamic) frequency; at the same time, MSI GeForce GTX 960 OC and MSI GeForce GTX 960 Gaming 2G run at 1178 MHz/1241 MHz & 1216 MHz/1279 MHz correspondingly. All three new-comers are equipped with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory having 128-bit interface; it operates at 1800 MHz (nominal)/7200 MHz (efficient) frequency.


MSI GeForce GTX 960 OC employs Armor 2X cooler with black-and-white cover design. It consists of two 90-mm fans, a middle-sized heatsink, and a couple of copper …

The most effective supercomputer is launched in China today. The system, called Sunway TaihuLight, operates locally developed processors. The ultimate Sunway TaihuLight productivity is 125 petaflops. In 2020 China plans to generate the first system in the world with a capacity overcoming one exaflops. At present the USA stays behind, however American supercomputers’ energy performance is significantly higher.



The US Department of Energy has established a $258 million grant for cost effective exaflop supermachines construction. Six American companies (IBM, Intel, AMD, Cray, HPE and NVIDIA) won it. Now they are to create an architecture, able to consume 25–30 MW at one exaflop productiveness. Such a system’s deployment is to take place in 2021. Apart from funds committed, each member company of the Exascale Computing Project program will put up its own means, constituting around 40% of DOE’s funds. Thus, the project cost will increase to $430 mln. In return, developers …