Heatpipe Cooling Performance

[amdnVuser]

When the 1st CPU heatpipe coolers came about, I remember reading an article about heatpipe technology that stated that heatpipes are sort of the best of both the air and liquid cooling worlds. More specifically, heatpipes help keep your CPU at a near constant temp. regardless of ambient temp. like liquid cooling is supposed to do (without, of course, having to worry about leaks, paying for liquid cooling components/kits, etc). I'd actually prefer to get a liquid cooling kit, namely the Swiftech H20-120, but I have a Lian-Li PC-V1000, and I cannot seem to remove the rear 120mm case fan, which would be required in order to mount the radiator on the back of the case (I paid quite a bit for this case, and I'd prefer not to cut a 120mm hole in the top...if any other PC-V1000 owners have done so, please let me know).

Anyway, so I'm wondering if this holds true for heatpipes. My apartment is upstairs, and during the summer (especially this summer), it gets pretty toasty inside when I leave for work (I just can't afford to leave the air conditioner on all day). To give you an idea, I've come home to my apartment after a scorching day (in the 100's), and it's like 95 deg. F. or so inside. When I checked my idle CPU temp., it was about 43 deg. C. (vs. ~33-36 deg. C. with ambient temp.'s of ~70-75 deg. F.).

I guess it doesn't matter so much (hell, I guess I could live with even a 10 deg. jump during the day), but I would prefer to try to keep my CPU temp.'s as stable as possible.

Thus, 1) Do heatpipes help keep CPU temp.'s nearly constant regardless of ambient temp.'s? 2) I've been considering the Thermalright XP-90c w/ a 92mm Panaflo L1 Ultra Quiet Fan...your thoughts? 3) Is the XP-90c too heavy for a K8N Neo2 Platinum?

System:
AMD Athlon64 3200+ (~1.52-1.54V, OC'd to 10*240HTT = 2.4GHz)
Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu @ ~2500rpm (getting a little noisy at this speed)
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (BIOS v. 1.9)
OCZ Gold DDR466 Rev. 3 @ 2.5, 4, 4, 10, 1T on a 0.83 mem. divider
eVGA AGP Geforce 6600 GT w/ Zalman VF700-AlCu
single 36.7GB WD Raptor
Sony DVD-ROM
Antec NeoPower 480W PSU
Lian-Li PC-V1000

 

[AntiStatic]

i removed my case fan from my V1000. here's how to do it: the little black plastic rivets that hold the fan in can be poked out with a pencil. The rivet consists of a a post and a tube that fits over the post. When the post is extended it pushes the ends of the tube out holding the fan in place. Just give it a poke and they come right out, it's much easier than it looks.

edit: I can post a picture if you need it.

 

[BassDodger]

Anyway, so I'm wondering if this holds true for heatpipes. My apartment is upstairs, and during the summer (especially this summer), it gets pretty toasty inside when I leave for work (I just can't afford to leave the air conditioner on all day). To give you an idea, I've come home to my apartment after a scorching day (in the 100's), and it's like 95 deg. F. or so inside. When I checked my idle CPU temp., it was about 43 deg. C. (vs. ~33-36 deg. C. with ambient temp.'s of ~70-75 deg. F.).

I dunno about the heatpipes helping you out, but as an HVAC Techician I can tell ya- you're wasting money on cooling your apartment...

If you come home to an apartment that's 95 or so and turn the A/C on, it's gonna take that A/C up to 3 times as long to run as to cool the apartment as just up-ing the temp a few degrees when you leave for work!

This is something I tell my residents and it helps-remember that you are no so much cooling the AIR in the apartment as you are cooling EVERYTHING in the apartment; countertops, sofas, chairs, walls... it's better for your A/C (AND your wallet) to MAINTAIN a temp rather that allow the temp to get so high as to cause the A/C to work twice as hard to cool down.

So, you leave for work and turn the A/C off...apartment heats up (probably to 20 degrees or more)...you turn the A/C on and it runs for 1-2 hours straight for the first 3 or 4 times it comes on in the night...then about 5 or 6 in the morning, it runs about 15 minutes per hour- or hour and 1/2 cycle to maintant the temp...you go to work and turn it off, wasting all the energy it took to cool the apartment down in the first place! It'd be better to raise the thermostat a few degrees so it would come on in hour and a half increments of 15 minutes 4 times throughout the day than 3 or 4 one hour increments that start when you come home. That way it would'nt have to work so hard for 6 hours of the night to get the temp to the desired level.

I know, this is a computer forum..but I hate to see people waste money.

Just A Thought,

Matt

 

[Furen]

No, your cpu will get hotter even with heatpipe coolers (or water coolers, for that matter) if you ambient temperature is higher. Below is an explaination on why, if you care...

This is because the cooling system still has to transfer the heat to the ambient by conduction--the hot fins have to be in contact with the "cooler" air and will continuously lose heat to the air unless they reach the same temperature. Of course, this point of equilibrium SHOULD never reached because a)the air is constantly being cycled (which is necessary because air has such a crappy specific heat that you need a lot of air to cool any metal) and b) heat is being added to the system continuously. The benefit of having heatpipes is that through the fluid's convection, the heat is moved from the source (the cpu core/IHS) to the heatsink fins (which increase the surface area that is in contact with the cooler air) at a much faster rate than simply by relying on the conductivity of the aluminum (or copper) heatsink. So there is a (more) uniform temperature differential between the fins and the air that is cooling them. Even though it will get hotter if your ambient is higher, it should not be a 1:1 relationship unless your cpu runs very cool.

 

[amdnVuser]

Thanks to everyone for the replies. Very informative.

 

[furballi]

1.Always turn off AC when NOT in use. This will save $. Don't take my word. Just call your local utility company. The thermodynamic principle is a little too complicated for this forum. Just set the room thermostat at 82F when you go home, and lower it to 78F in the evening.

Turn off the PC when not in use. The heatpipe will not be able to lower the temperature of the CPU below the room temp. A properly designed PC will be okay up to about 95F room temp.

Note that a rise of 1F in room temp will translate to a 1F rise in CPU temp.

 

[Safeway]

Yea, setting the AC up a few degrees can save a crapload of money. Really, the difference between 80 and 78 is $100 for a medium sized house.

 

[Lazien]

Supposedly You use 10% less energy for every degree F You raise Your AC.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

As should be apparent from posts preceding this one, raising the ambient (room) temperature X degrees will raise the CPU idle temperature by X degrees and the CPU load temperature by X degrees.

The heatpipe cooler should provide a constant DIFFERENCE between idle and load temperatures, regardless of the ambient value. The lower the cooler's rated thermal resistance, the smaller the difference between idle and load temperatures at all ambient values.

 

[AntiStatic]

here is a pic of the plastic rivet things-

http://img290.imageshack.us/img290/7731/fanremoval6sd.jpg

 

[Unkno]

if your running a stock cooler, the xp90 (heatpipe) would offer good performance, it would help out a lot even if your not running AC. You can't go wrong with getting a better heatsink