Heatpipe Cooling

drag

Elite Member
Jul 4, 2002
8,708
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The heatpipe is a tube sealed at both ends and partially filled with a heat sensitive liquid. Maybe alchohol with water or some other chemical that evaperates easily.

When liquid evaperates it requires energy. This energy is heat. It heats up, evaporates and takes energy away in order to do it.

Then the steam moves to the colder part of the tube, the steam now attempts to liquidefy again. In order to do this it must get rid of the heat. The tube is cooler then the steam so it extracts the heat energy from the stream and the steam turns into liquid and then the droplets go back down to the hot part of the tube and repeats the proccess over and over again.

Liquid sits in the hot part of the tube, near the heatsource. It heats up, floats to the cold part as steam, the part with the fins and the fan and such. Deposites the heat and then drips back down.

The fins and fans keep the cool part cool, and the heatsink and cpu keep the hot part hot.
 

jagec

Lifer
Apr 30, 2004
24,442
6
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It's just a good method for moving heat from one point to another. You still have to get rid of the heat eventually, but with a bigger heatsink you can just have the heatpipe transport heat to a more finned area for dissapation.
 

wkwong

Banned
May 10, 2004
280
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traditional heatsinks rely on the heat to travel through the metal, which is much slower than through a heatpipe. the heatpipe brings heat straight from the base to areas of the heatsink that normally don't get as hot.
 

Calin

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2001
3,112
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The idea is to "protect" the base of the heat spreader. A normal metal heat sink will have the temperature decrease from the center to the exterior. A heat pipe - as long as it has some liquid in the central area - will keep it at the evaporation temperature. This will tend to equalize the temperatures on the heat sink, with the following effects: the temperature at the heat spreader decrease (so the processor is happier) and the temperature at the edges of the heat sink increase (so the heat is moved out of the heat sink into the air faster).

Calin

OK, I know I am not consistent scientifically...