A new, entirely passive cooling design, no moving parts

[FishTankX]

Allright, I just had an idea. It might be hard to pull off, but it's still an idea.

What you could do, is have a waterblock, and a heat pipe running to a resivour. Then the resivour having a heatpipe running to the radiator. Or eliminate the middle step, and have the resivour on the waterblock, then have the heatpipe running to the resivour.

How difficult would it be to incorporate heatpipes into the watercooling loop?

 

[CharlesMcKinney]

well this probably wouldn't work...The whole heatpipe technology is dependent on gases that have vaporization temperatures in the 40-70C range. Water vaporizes at 100C, and if your CPU got that hot, well, it wouldn't be working for long...

 

[Bluefront]

You're describing a thermo-syphon water cooling system....no water pump involved. Early auto engines used this technique. It involves heated water rising off a heat source, flowing upward to the top of a radiator, being cooled off by airflow, exiting the bottom of the radiator and flowing to the bottom of the original heat source. The cycle then starts over.

Whether this system is efficient enough to work on a CPU....is doubtful. Throw a small water-pump in the system and it works.

 

[FishTankX]

So how easy would it be to have a heatpipe nexus radiator, that accepted modular heatpipe connections from the rest of the system and disipated the heat at a radiator external to the case?

 

[FishTankX]

Originally posted by: CharlesMcKinney
well this probably wouldn't work...The whole heatpipe technology is dependent on gases that have vaporization temperatures in the 40-70C range. Water vaporizes at 100C, and if your CPU got that hot, well, it wouldn't be working for long...

When the water coolant reached 40c, the material in the heatpipe would vaporize, wouldn't it? Carrying it off to the radiator.

 

[Cheesetogo]

Zalman has somthing like this, although it is all heatpipes and no water. It costs like 1300 dolars though. http://www.frozencpu.com/cas-208.html

 

[Operandi]

Originally posted by: FishTankX

Originally posted by: CharlesMcKinney
well this probably wouldn't work...The whole heatpipe technology is dependent on gases that have vaporization temperatures in the 40-70C range. Water vaporizes at 100C, and if your CPU got that hot, well, it wouldn't be working for long...

When the water coolant reached 40c, the material in the heatpipe would vaporize, wouldn't it? Carrying it off to the radiator.

Water is only useful as a medium to move the heat energy. If I?m understanding your idea correctly there is no pump involved so the water isn't really doing anything. You're much better of getting the heat pipes directly in contact with a very large heatsink. Something integrated into the case as an external heatsink, Hush and Zalman are the only one?s doing it as far as I know.

 

[FishTankX]

Well, I was thinking of the water as a medium because it's a tremondous heat resivour so it would keep the heat from rising to critical levels too quickly before the radiator could disipate it.

But I guess all heatpipes would work. How hard would it be to make the whole top of the case into a radiator? With grate, ofcourse.

 

[Operandi]

Originally posted by: FishTankX
Well, I was thinking of the water as a medium because it's a tremondous heat resivour so it would keep the heat from rising to critical levels too quickly before the radiator could disipate it.

But I guess all heatpipes would work. How hard would it be to make the whole top of the case into a radiator? With grate, ofcourse.

In order for the water to do any good you'll have to circulate it. You'll need a pump, natural convection won't do it.

 

[FishTankX]

So could you build a central radiator, and heat absorbers that would take heat away from the heatpipes and into the radiator?

 

[Dough1397]

why not have a like a 5 litre reservoir with fins (something liek th zalman blue thingy i forgot what is called) and have teh heat pip[es in that

 

[FishTankX]

What I want to know is, how feasable would it be for an average joe like me to construct a heatpipe with the help of my engineering department budies?