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Hitachi Demos Water-Cooled Notebooks
Sprocket writes: "Water-cooled processors, currently the domain of supercomputers, high-end servers, and garage hobbyists, may be about to enter the mainstream.
Hitachi has developed a prototype notebook PC that uses a water-based solution to cool down its Pentium 4 processor and is planning to commercialize the product for corporate users in the third quarter of this year... read more"
Well, you can scratch Antarctica and Siberia as places you can't use this notebook, if the liquid coolant freezes in very low external temperatures.
Water has a much higher calorific capacity than air. I believe it's around 4.19J/g*Celsius which is very high.
It is the logical choice for cooling, being less noisy, parts have to move slower, etc etc... But why does the article say this is for garage hobbyists? Water cooling has been around for a while and at least 5 relatively large cies offer it. Tomshardware and Anandtech have had quite a few reviews of the different brands.
Another plus is you can plug everything on the same circuit, Northbridge, CPU, GPU, hell, even the power supply. All you have to do is increase the pipe size by a relatively small factor.
The temperature is maintained around ambient too, so the cooling is MUCH more efficient than air.
The next step is nanocooling. There was an article in Nature a way back about nanofans (more like oscillating piezoelectric thingys), that dissipate heat at an astounding rate (although I don't recall how exactly since they throw it at the air which doesn't have such a good calorific capacity...). Anyways, the point is that this isn't really revolutionary because it has been used in home computers (by more than garage hobbyists) for at least 3 years. And before that there was Kryotech...
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
Negative.
Here's a picture of a first generation DC's guts:
http://www.mindspring.com/~refridgerator/dc5.jp
Note the heatsink and fan combo on the top-left of the image.
Victor
doesn't conduct electricity . . . check
isn't caustic . . . check
isn't extremely sticky when dried . . . D'oh!
~~~
Isn't this really just more evidence that a P4 is inappropriate for laptops? Intel is making a good attempt at targeting a specific market (P4 is "primarily" a server chip), but their insistence on cramming every processor into a small box just for shits and giggles is silly.
With current tech, we could create a 486 based word processing machine, thinner, cheaper, lighter, and with a week's worth of power, rather than just a few hours.
Why they insist on forcing desktop replacements on the market is beyond me. (Actually, it isn't beyond me, it's all about keeping those profit margins high.)
As a writer, dealing with these noisy, overheating, overpriced, heavy machines is distasteful. As a programmer, I'm gonna use my laptop as a terminal, not a server, so all those extra CPU cycles are wasted.
Have you considered a 14" 600MHz 6lb iBook for your needs?
Word, Office, bash, sips at the battery, and comes with a fairly hefty 55W battery too. It runs, what, at a rated 6hours on a single battery? I suspect it runs lower, of course, but still, 4.5 hours isn't horrible.
GPL Deconstructed
If only notebooks would allow you to easily underclock, then you run at lower power and not bake your lap or boil water.