At CES today we saw what at first resembles a Cooler Master V6 CPU heastink and fan combo. The processor cooler features a red 120mm fan housed in a black shroud which is then attached to the heatsink itself. The heatsink is a tower design with six copper heatpipes attached to a copper CPU block. The heatpipes then lead into a tower of aluminum fins to dissipate heat.

On the back of the unit; however, there’s a little something extra in the form of a nano-itx motherboard and AMD E-350 APU based on the Brazos platform. The computer is self contained and provides a number of connectivity options. For more information on the Brazos platform and E-350 APU, see our preview and review articles. A quick run down of the E-350 specifications; however, is below.

Two Bobcat CPU cores at 1.6 GHz

A Radeon HD 6310 GPU with 80 processing cores running at 500 MHz

A TDP of 18 watts

DirectX 11 Graphics and DDR3 Memory Support

The bottom of the rear of the CPU cooler is the location of the nano-ITX motherboard’s rear IO panel. The motherboard features Wi-Fi, HDMI, two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, VGA(?), and e-SATA(?) connections.

A side view of the Cooler Master heatsink is available below.

It’s certainly a new idea, and it will definitely hit home for people that don’t need or want to run their power hungry main desktop all the time. Because the system is self contained it does present some usability issues. Mainly that you will need to have a KVM or VNC connection to control it and the inside of the computer case is going to become a lot more crowded with cables. Further, it would be a pain to have to open up the main desktop system just to plug in a flash drive or cable. On the other hand, it’d make for a nice media or file server and would not require the desktop be on 24/7 without needing yet another box crowding my desk so I’d give it a shot. (The inside of my computer case is already a mess of wires so what do I have to lose?)

What are your thoughts on this somewhat strange CPU cooler?

PC Perspective’s CES 2012 coverage is sponsored by MSI Computer.

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