Cooler analysis of the Intel Arc B60 Pro – vapor-chamber meets fins
The teardown of the Sparkle Intel Arc Pro B60 was comparatively simple, as the card has a modular design and can be completely dismantled with just a few screws. As another colleague is also going to measure the same card, I limited my intervention to dismantling the cooler, backplate and base plate in order to avoid unnecessary stress on the pads and threads. The rear of the board shows large thermal contact pads at the positions of the rear-mounted GDDR6 memory chips. A total of six of the twelve modules are mounted there, which explains the symmetrical distribution around the central GPU die. These pads transfer the heat loss from the rear-mounted memory chips to the solid, black anodized aluminium backplate. This in turn serves as a secondary heat sink and mechanically stabilizes the board.
The card’s cooling system is technically more sophisticated than you would expect in this price range. The centerpiece is a large vapor chamber that covers almost the entire GPU zone and is connected to the thermal pads of the GPU, memory and VRM via a nickel-plated cover plate. The vapor chamber works on the principle of phase change cooling: a small amount of working fluid evaporates in the hot zone above the GPU, migrates to colder areas, condenses there again and transfers the heat to the fin structure. The condensation film is transported back to the evaporator area via capillary action, creating a closed circuit.
The waste heat is then removed by a radial fan with a diameter of 6.6 cm, which draws in air from the side and blows it out through the fin block towards the slot cover. This so-called blower design has the advantage that the hot exhaust air is led directly out of the housing, which is particularly advantageous in compact workstations. The disadvantage is the higher speed and the resulting noise level, but this is often accepted for professional cards as cooling performance is the main priority.
The combination of radial fan, massive vapor chamber and rear heat dissipation via the backplate shows that Sparkle has not just built a minimal OEM solution here, but a cooling system designed for continuous operation with an industrial character.
The fan’s connection cable has four poles and is routed via a standard GPU FAN header, which enables PWM control and tacho feedback. Even if the fan is somewhat more restrained when idling, it can produce a decent amount of noise under full load. However, this is really brutal due to the system. But more on that later. The slot bracket of the Sparkle Intel Arc Pro B60 is made of nickel-plated sheet steel and has four DisplayPort connectors arranged horizontally. The upper part of the panel is provided with a dense row of small round holes, which are intended to serve as air outlets. Although this pattern looks robust and uniform, it proves to be less efficient in practice. The surface area of the holes is too small in relation to the overall width of the panel, which obstructs the airflow generated by the radial fan as it exits.
Especially in a blower design, the air resistance at the slot opening is crucial, as all the waste heat has to escape through this bottleneck. The round openings significantly reduce the effective cross-section and lead to a higher static pressure, which in turn can increase the speed and volume of the fan. As a result, the cooling performance decreases slightly, while the acoustic behavior under load becomes more unpleasant. A better solution would be a slot bracket with elongated ventilation slots in a vertical orientation, such as those found on professional cards from Nvidia or AMD.
This design offers around 25 to 30 percent more open area with the same stability and directs the airflow outwards in a more targeted manner. Alternatively, a combination of a large-area grille plate and a separate cover for the DisplayPorts would also be conceivable in order to avoid unnecessarily slowing down the airflow in the area of the slat block. Although the current design meets the formal requirements, it wastes thermal potential, which is definitely relevant for a workstation card with a high continuous load.
- 1 - Intro, overview and technical data
- 2 - Test system and equipment
- 3 - Teardown: PCB, topology and components
- 4 - Teardown: Cooler and fan
- 5 - Teardown: Material analysis and TIM testing
- 6 - Autodesk AutoCAD
- 7 - Autodesk Inventor Pro
- 8 - PTC Creo
- 9 - Dassault Systèmes Solidworks
- 10 - Autodesk Maya
- 11 - SPECviewperf 15 (2025)
- 12 - Adobe Photoshop 26.10
- 13 - Adobe After Effects 2025
- 14 - Adobe Premiere Pro 25.41
- 15 - AI benchmarks (AI Vision, Image, Text)
- 16 - Rendering
- 17 - Temperatures, clock rate, power consumption, noise
- 18 - Summary and conclusion
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