Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on November 11, 2013, 01:40:46 AM

Raw wattage isn't the whole story in thermodynamics. Your lawn on a hot summer day probably absorbs a couple KW of heat. Do you have exotic water cooling or install heat sinks on your grass blades.

Now that was a intentionally silly example but heat flux especially localized heat flux is relevant in the heat transfer requirements of the cooling system. This is why both HashFast and Cointerra are able to use OEM CPU coolers despite as you point out no CPU has a TDP of 300W+.

my point is that a high end bitcoin miner is designed to run at a TDP of over 300W, ALL OF THE TIME - and not just one chip doing that.. all of them are doing that in one box (in ct.'s case thats 4 chips, each with a TDP over 300W, all next to each other)... whereas an Intel cpu, when over clocked, isn't going anywhere near this zone. In normal usage, even when being maxed out, it runs at 125 watts (for the big ones) and 90w for the smaller ones. It only ever runs at 250_ watts when its being tweaked by an over clocker, and even then, it doesn't run at that wattage all of the time... it is bursty. its only during a task, like a video compression or math problem.. that it might do that, for hours maybe.. but not for days and weeks upon a time. that full time load puts a lot of strain on the cooling system.

and yes, both hashfast and cointerra are using high end pc cooling technology, but even then, I'm sure they're using the extra strength version of it.. not the standard common or garden models. cointerras radiators look custom (and big!)... they're not similar to anything I've seen in a store.. though hashfast's radiators do look similar to high end pc ones like the Corsair Hydro series (probably H80)