Crazy heatsink for your CPU creates a vortex, possibly

t-shooter
If what I’m getting out of the dubious Google translation of this page is correct, this freaky component is a heatsink for your CPU. But it’s so big, and the fan is… also so big! It looks like cool air is pulled in through the vents on the bottom of the four-barreled aluminum “T-Shooter” and blown out the top by a full-size fan constantly sucking air out of the pipes. Does this create some kind of cooling vortex? Is there really enough surface area? Can the heat possibly creep so high as to necessitate some five inches of heatsink?

There’s a discussion going on over at HardOCP, where this originated (and the collage above), and I have more faith in their hardware-orientated community than my own meager skills.