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Using Radiators to Cool CPUs

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the well-I-guess-that'd-work dept.

dan writes "Overclockers Australia have a review up of the CPU Radiator Zen, a new approach to cooling your toasty CPU's. Rather than taking the traditional approach of a heatsink with lots of fins and a noisy 7,000rpm fan it uses radiator/heat pipe technology. The implementation of the unit is a bit flawed, but it is interesting to see where the technology is heading.. and if it can be done right I personally think this is where it will end up."

3 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. Heat pipes have been in use for a long time by Sara+Chan · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I've got a 1998 Twinhead laptop that uses heat pipe technology for cooling. The laptop also has a fan, which almost never goes on, due to the heat pipe. (It was for the quiet fanless running that I bought a Twinhead.)

    Twinhead advertising claims that their heat pipe technology is patented. I've no further details and couldn't find anything relevant on their web site.


    Buy Windows XP. Give Bill Gates even more of your money.

  2. Other reviews by alewando · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Other sites have also reviewed the Radiator Zen SCR325-2F:

    The reviews are all favorable, but it's not clear whether this is simply because the reviewers are blinded by the "hey, it's neat!" factor, or whether the Radiator Zen SCR325-2F actually has a legitimate technical advantage. But hey, it is neat, so I can't blame them.
  3. I doubt this thing actually does anything... by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I mean, you have a radiator which exposes the same surface area as a typical heat sync, but makes less effective contact with the heat source.

    The fluid is probably not doing anything significant at all, the two fans gushing past the aluminum tubes is probably doing all the work.

    I don't even think this thing is actively cooling. There doesn't seem to be any pump... they're relying on the thermal gradient to cause the vapourizing fluid to move to the cool side of the radiator and condense. It doesn't work that way. You need to have some way of forcing the fluid to move in one direction, you need to cause the liquid to vapourize by forcing it through a small opening, pulling heat from the CPU.

    If you can somehow get around that technical wizardry, then you have to find fluids which vapourize at the temperature of the CPU, but condense at the temperature on the other side of the radiator... whatever wimpy thermal gradient that might be... the pressure of the system also remains constant because the whole system is operating passively of course.

    In other words... if you have a CPU at 50 degrees C, and your cooling fluid vapourizes at 40 celcius, then the other side of your heat sync MUST remain lower than 40 celcius, otherwise you just have a bunch of tubes full of pressurized vapour. There is no reason for the cooling side to actually cool especially if the same area is exposed to the CPU as is exposed to the fans.

    On the other hand, if your fluid vapourizes at 60C, it doesn't actually DO anything until the CPU reaches that temperature.

    This is not to say that passive refrigerators do not exist, I just don't think they've built one. They've built a chunk of aluminum full of fluid with two fans blowing through it.

    They should have run another benchmark: Drain the radiator.

    Kryotech has this done right.