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THe Sandia Cooler - Breakthrough in Air Cooling design

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I haven't seen any performance numbers yet. I am inclined to assume that it barely works at all, and thats enough for them to flip out and rave about how they have something with "potential". Prove me wrong please because this would be cool if for real.
 
Magic Carpet said:
Within the specs and design parameters.
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Overclocking is meant to make it work out of spec, and outside of design parameters, but still within material and electrical tolerance levels. but this is all off-topic.

i didn't see anyone mention it...but does this work at all when the m/b is vertical inside the case? won't gravity (which is no longer perpendicular to the spin direction) interfere with the "floatiness" of the "Spinning Fins of Death (tm)"?
 
Borealis7 said:
Overclocking is meant to make it work out of spec, and outside of design parameters, but still within material and electrical tolerance levels. but this is all off-topic.
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Even with a respectable overclock, 3770K doesn't go out of designed thermal parameters. This problem again, is largely exaggerated.


moonbogg said:
They talk about it being more efficient. It can be more efficient and still not cool a stock running chip lower than 70c. I want real cooling numbers and I am discouraged by the fact that they are simply not forthcoming.
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They don't release them, for one simple reason => they are not breathtaking, simple as. The only real advantage of this design may just be the physical dimensions. And it won't be cheap.
 
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moonbogg said:
I haven't seen any performance numbers yet. I am inclined to assume that it barely works at all, and thats enough for them to flip out and rave about how they have something with "potential". Prove me wrong please because this would be cool if for real.
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If you read the thread, you'll see that there's a 48-page PDF from Sandia that gives a detailed explanation of how it works as well as a lot of performance data for an early prototype. There's an interesting plot on page 44 of thermal resistance vs. power consumption for their early prototype device (note that the PDF is apparently from ~2.5 years ago). There's also an old Q&A with the inventor by ExtremeTech where he says the 0.2C/W version is a "badly unoptimized" version 1 prototype, and he also says:
An important point to keep in mind is that the version 1 prototype device discussed in this report is badly unoptimized. The main objective for version 1 was to test our hypotheses regarding the advantages of such a device architecture. If things continue to go well in lab, I suspect eventually we’ll end up at about 0.05 C/W for a 10 cm diameter device that’s of order 3 cm high, operates at three to four thousand rpm, is inaudible, and consumes about 5 watts of electrical power. But believe it when you see it. There’s always risk involved in try to solve tough problems. We’re giving it our best shot. We’re also working on alternative device geometries that may be capable of providing considerably better performance.
 
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Borealis7 said:
i didn't see anyone mention it...but does this work at all when the m/b is vertical inside the case? won't gravity (which is no longer perpendicular to the spin direction) interfere with the "floatiness" of the "Spinning Fins of Death (tm)"?
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I think it works similar to the read/write head of a hard drive. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I remember it is that the spinning hard drive platter creates a layer of air upon which the read/write head floats. The head is still close enough so that the magnetic field can read and write to the platter, but it doesn't touch. This works even if the hard drive is horizontal, vertical, or being moved, just don't subject the drive to a sharp blow.
 
They got a pregnant woman as their ONLY fluid physicist. That was in the video, LOL. she looks so out of place in every shot.

IDK why they don't hire more fluid people.
 
Borealis7 said:
i didn't see anyone mention it...but does this work at all when the m/b is vertical inside the case? won't gravity (which is no longer perpendicular to the spin direction) interfere with the "floatiness" of the "Spinning Fins of Death (tm)"?
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This is what I'm wondering. How does this kind of device work if you have a non-level, non-stationary surface you want to cool?

How much care would I have to take in moving my PC case if I had one of these installed?
 
drill-bits-hole-saw-275x300.jpg


Looks perfectly safe. 😉
 
veri745 said:
This is what I'm wondering. How does this kind of device work if you have a non-level, non-stationary surface you want to cool?
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This is addressed in the interview.

--

Q: Does the air bearing heat exchanger only work in a horizontal orientation? Or are other angles possible?
JK: As discussed in the white paper, a downward restoring force many times that of the gravitational force acting on the mass of the heat-sink-impeller is generated by attractive interaction of the permanent magnet rotor and the high magnetic permeability stator. For this reason the device can operate in any orientation and the air gap varies little as a function of orientation angle.
​
 
CharlesKozierok said:
In the video they mention that the whine is caused by the prototype using an open DC motor. You won't hear that on a production device.

Really amazing idea. Thanks for bumping the thread.
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Yeah I wasn't too impressed by the high pitch whine but if they can eliminate it in the production design then that's great.

So I wonder how they scale these things for cooling. Do they just make them taller and taller like we do now with traditional heatsink fins?

Since it draws air in from the middle, I can see where there is a perpetual scale of diminishing returns on making the fins/blades taller and taller as the area near the bottom of the stack (which also happens to be the hottest part of the stack because that is where the CPU heat is coupled) versus the W/C cooling rate it can achieve.
 
This is awesome tech, minor issues need to be fixed and hopefully none are deal-breakers. So far it doesn't seem that there are any huge issues. It seems most people did not look over the 48 page PDF or read his Q&A.

Usually if you CPU fan dies, your CPU will too, however a long time ago AMD and Intel stopped that by having automatic throttling and you can have a shutoff temp too if it gets too high.

As for the noise I hope they can fix it but...-> server environment anyone. Who cares about noise.


Personally they need to slap one on a MB and show it cooling an i7 vs a normal top of the line cooler.
 
Ferzerp said:
It's just hand wavey pseudo-explanations seeking venture capitalists. Why is this still around? 😛
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I'm kinda feeling this way aswell, we had a 40 odd page technical document and a 1st gen working prototype a year ago. The tech was all there they just had a few minor issues to iron out so i'm thinking one of two things.

1. It doesn't work as well as they are making out/is prohibitivly expensive.

2. They have decided to develop the tech for other uses that will generate actual income. I assume they have sunk a shed load of cash into developing this and want maximum return. I just don't see aftermarket cpu coolers as anywhere near the top of the "hey lets work on that first" list, fitting this tech (assuming it actually works as described) to 1% of the worlds AC units will generate about 50 times more revenue than using it on every single aftermarket CPU cooler in the world.

For the record i'm still in camp 1.
 
If it actually worked I think you would see Apple selling them by now. Isn't that what they do? Take other peoples ideas then tie them up in a 10 year legal battle over who came up with it first and somehow win.
 
Ferzerp said:
It's just hand wavey pseudo-explanations seeking venture capitalists. Why is this still around? 😛
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The white paper was published in what, 2009?

People are so impatient, lol.

New technology takes time.

As for Apple, what percentage of its sales even involve large CPU coolers anyway?
 
moonbogg said:
What does that mean? OK so they provided useless date. I want useful data. They should install it on a 3930K and OC it to 4.5, run prime and email me the results right away.
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I'm responding to Borealis7's false claim that power consumption is going up, where he used the temps of Ivy Bridge as evidence.
 
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