Shuttle SN26P with SLI

Getting closer

The heatpipe cooling solution is quite a feat of engineering - let's move in for a look at some of the details.

The heatsinks at the top of the case aren't exactly what you'd call heavy duty, especially in light of some of the crazy all-copper designs that have been released recently for CPU cooling. However, they do appear to get the job done without adding more weight than they need to.

The 6800 GT cards have additional ramsinks added to help keep the memory cool and the board stable - no easy task with such limited airflow. One of these ramsinks on each board has some fins machined down to allow the heatpipe to pass up at the correct angle.


Here are the pair removed from the case. You can see just how minimal the core cooling actually is: just a simple x-shaped bracket front & back with the single heatpipe loop secured to it for wicking the heat away from the GPU out to the radiator. It is interesting to see just how sparse the PCB is around the core, as the reference cooler design calls for a large slab of copper in this area.


The two cards in an SLI system need to talk to one another to share the rendering load, and this data is shared across a bridge via two connectors mounted on the leading edges of cards. Normal desktop motherboards allow plenty of space between PCI Express slots, but since space (or more specifically, width) is at a premium inside a small form factor PC, Shuttle have used what is quite possibly the smallest bridge PCB known to man. Here it is next to a regular bridge - it is no more than half the length.