Graphics card Thermal Imaging Temperature measurements

Thermal Imaging Temperature Measurements

A new addition to our reviews will be the inclusion of Forward Looking Infra Red thermal images of hardware. Over the past years we have been trying to figure out what the best possible way is to measure temperatures on hardware. Multiple options are available but the best thing to do is to visualize heat coming from the product or component being tested. The downside of thermal imaging hardware is simple, FLIR camera's with a bit of decent resolution costs up-to 10,000 EUR. Hence we passed on it for a long time. With a thermal imaging camera a special lens focuses the infrared light emitted by all of the objects in view. This focused light is scanned by a phased array of infrared-detector elements. The detector elements create a very detailed temperature pattern called a thermogram. It only takes about one-thirtieth of a second for the detector array to obtain the temperature information to make the thermogram. This information is obtained from several thousand points in the field of view of the detector array. The thermogram created by the detector elements is translated into electric impulses. The impulses are sent to a signal-processing unit, a circuit board with a dedicated chip that translates the information from the elements into data for the display. The signal-processing unit sends the information to the display, where it appears as various colors depending on the intensity of the infrared emission. The combination of all the impulses from all of the elements creates the image. We can seek hotspots on the PCB indicating, for example, GPU but also VRM temperature as well as how heat is distributed throughout a product. We do hope you will enjoy this new technology as it did cost us an arm and a leg to be able to implement it. 

Right, so the backplate is bothering us. But we know already that the peak temps of the GPU will sit in the 45~52 Degrees C range. At M1 we see a gap indicating a roughly 77 degrees C, ths is the VRM area and it indicates that these are not liquid cooled. 

When we position the thermal camera outwards we can see that the overall cooler design really works extremely well. nothing really lights up. Let's move the thermal camera to the top position. 

A top view thermal image shows no heat leakage into the motherboard, overall this can be considered to be very good thermal properties. We do see that the VRM area lights up, these remain normal temps though.
 

And hard to see as it really doesn't light up, the radiator. Nothing on this card is worrying, in fact all looks good aside from the '"normal" VRM area temperatures. it would have been nice to see these being cooled by the liquid cooling solution as well.