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"

Comments

No Athlon 4 version?

[Sivar]

Hitachi has developed a prototype notebook PC that uses a water-based solution to cool down its Pentium 4 processor
Doh!

Re:No Athlon 4 version?

[JayAndSilentBob]

An Athlon 4 with water-cooling would just produce steam.

Re:No Athlon 4 version?

[irony nazi]

Does this laptop make espresso?

Re:No Athlon 4 version?

[Sivar]

The mobile Athlon4's dissipate substantially less heat than the desktop parts do. Noteably, the 1.2GHz Athlon4 dissipates the same heat at 1.2GHz as the 1.1GHz part does. Do you think that a laptop manufacturer like, say, HP would have a chip in their laptops that dissipates 65W of heat? It would be all but impossible to deal with such heat in a confined area.
That, coupled with the Athlon4's ability to throttle its speed many steps based on the amount of CPU power actually needed, makes it consume still less power. Note that Intel's Speedstep technology is just that, a SpeedSTEP--one--there is only one lower speed that the chip can run at, so it's either 100% or whatever single fraction the chip's speedstep tech has been setup to run at, whereas AMD's PowerNow is something of a hybrid between Transmeta's "Run at exactly the clockspeed needed right now" and Intel's "Run at speed A or B."
The Athlon4 core may not be the /best/ for a laptop, at least not until it is reduced to 0.13 micron transistors, but it isn't bad either.

Re:No Athlon 4 version?

[Hoser McMoose]

FWIW the Athlon4 mobile processor at it's highest speed available now has a thermal design power consumption of 25W. Intel's P4 mobiles are all expected to be well over 30W of TDP (for comparison, AMD's desktop Athlon chips range from ~40-75W, while Intel's desktop P4's range from about 50-85W).

What's more, that's for AMD's .18 micron fab process mobile chips vs. Intel's .13 micron fab process chips. When you start comparing AMD's mobile .13 micron chips vs. Intel's mobile .13 micron chips (both of which should be available in a month or two) things should look even a bit better for AMD.

a funny joke

[flynt]

Usually I'm worried about spilling water on my laptop. Now I have to worry about spilling water OUT of my laptop!

Re:a funny joke

[cel4145]

just remember this geek survival tip:

if stuck in the desert without water, remove processor from notebook and drink water!

Re:a funny joke

[(void*)]

What and make my processor overheat? No way!

Re:a funny joke

[Snoopy77]

Think long and hard before doing that cause you're warranty probably won't cover that.

Water-cooled

[Traxton1]

Wasn't the Dreamcast water cooled if I recall correctly?

Re:Water-cooled

[cadallin451]

The original Japanese Dreamcast was. The American Dreamcast just had a fan. It still negates the point of this article though. Water cooling for consumer electronics has already happened and is, in fact, Old News.

Re:Water-cooled

[bobdole369]

I think the Dreamcast had a heatpipe. Lots of laptops have heat pipes (basically a tube under certain pressure and a bit of an angle with a few drops of water in it, in normal state it is liquid, that under heat cause the water to turn to vapor, migrate away from the heat source, evaporate and drip back down the tube into vapor again.) Not new at all, and very passive... Not actively pumped about like this is....

Re:Water-cooled

[Sorcerer13]

Yeah, I believe one of the special edition versions released in Japan was water cooled. Most of them were air cooled however.

Re:Water-cooled

[VPN3000]

Negative.

Here's a picture of a first generation DC's guts:

http://www.mindspring.com/~refridgerator/dc5.jpg

Note the heatsink and fan combo on the top-left of the image.

Victor

Re:Water-cooled

[bobdole369]

Aye, so noted, is this a US DC or a JAP?

Re:Water-cooled

[Tofuhead]

Of all the responses here, yours is the most correct. The first generation of Japanese-manufactured Dreamcast (made for the Japanese and U.S. markets) was cooled by a heat pipe and slow (quiet) metal fan. These models were considerably heavier than the later/non-Japanese-made models because of the weight of the heat pipe and fan. They also had more heat problems than later models, because they originally used an older, hotter-running rev of the Hitachi SH4.

To complement the cooler SH4s, later models used light heat sinks and faster-spinning (louder) plastic fans. The drives were also different, causing minor differences in noise, compatibility, and reliability (none of which contributed to any cooling issues).

In any case, you are right in that the "water cooling" done by the heatpipe was much more passive than Hitachi's method. It was so passive (and largely ineffective) that it was designed to augment the cooling effects of the fan, not replace the fan entirely.

< tofuhead >

Re:Water-cooled

[VPN3000]

Japan, I think. It's from an old 1998 website previewing the release.

There are a few places you can't use it

[MtViewGuy]

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.

Re:There are a few places you can't use it

[cel4145]

Hopefully, they'll have sense enough to test it in low pressure situations as well. Would be a shame to have cabin depressurization on a plane and have the notebook cooler explode.

Re:There are a few places you can't use it

[Rasta Prefect]

For that matter, I live in North Dakota at the moment and it gets pretty damn cold here too. Still, when you consider that LCD's don't work in cold weather either, it's really not a problem.

Re:There are a few places you can't use it

[cel4145]

Since September 11, there are a lot of us who wouldn't cower, kissing our ass goodbye. We'd need that laptop to send out one last email.

Re:There are a few places you can't use it

[gregfortune]

Isn't that the whole point? The colder the liquid, as long as it had room in the coolant system to freeze and expand, the happier I am. If the entire system functioned there, the cooling system would rock ;o) Heck, you'd probably even use your hands to help out.

Re:There are a few places you can't use it

[LordBhaal]

Ahh, but this design dumps the heat to the back of the display, so you should be ok there.

Re:There are a few places you can't use it

[mozmozmoz]

Two things:

• the coolant will be one of the less sensitive bits of the laptop. Go on, stick *your* laptop in the freezer for a fews days if you doubt me.
  
• odds on the additive will lower the freezing point, possibly by 10-20K
  

Moz

Re:There are a few places you can't use it

[WasterDave]

No, that would be funny as.

Take off.... climb for twenty minutes then "paff! SHIT!" from business class.

Larf larf larf.
Dave

Re:There are a few places you can't use it

[mgoff]

If you're talking about operation problems, your LCD would crap out long before your coolant would freeze. Plus, your battery life would be terrible. If you're using a laptop in those kind of conditions, it would need to be designed specifically for the extremes it would encounter. Besides, if I'm in one of those places, I'm sure as hell going to find a nice warm building before I start browsing Slashdot via my Iridium network connection.

If you're talking about just storing it in your sealskin bag as you trudge through the snowdrifts, you've still got the LCD problem. And I'm pretty sure you've exceeded the cold non-op rating for a few other parts too.

Re:There are a few places you can't use it

[SuiteSisterMary]

You know, I still recall an article I read in one of the PC rags several years back. They took a bunch of laptops and 'real world' stressed them; threw them in the oven, freezer, dropped them from a desk, that sort of thing. Did before and after benchmarks for each, then took one of each laptop, and did everything to it, just to see if it would still run. The thing I recall is that one of the tests was spilling a set amount of coffee on the keyboard, waiting for it to dry, then trying it out. One of the laptops actually ran 11 percent faster after this was done to it. Freezing a laptop won't harm the electronics, unless you power it up cold, where the shock might start cracking the silicon or blowing the conduits. Letting it return to room temps before you turn it on will prevent damage from happening. Not sure if the LCD will survive, though.

Re:There are a few places you can't use it

[imadude]

Don't worry about that pal, I hear they are also working on a special "coolant-warmer" device for Antartic-users. Of course then they would need to invent a "coolant-cooling" device for people travelling with their lap-tops in the dessert. Life is so complicated, isn't it?

I have a water cooled notebook

[sulli]

well, coffee cooled.

What, you want it to work or something?

Help keep your coffee warm...

[arberya]

With the amount of heat the P4 generates, you might be able to cook pizza, replace home central heating, ...

Re:Help keep your coffee warm...

[VasilyPupkin]

Not sure about Pizza on P4, but try an egg on AthlonXP :-)

Boring.

[NiftyNews]

Water-cooled? That's boring.

Now what I want is an Ice-Cream-Cooled Laptop. Like an electronic Klondike bar. Mmmm...

Re:Boring.

[jx100]

..and it'll also be a good explanation for all of that white sticky stuff in your lap

Quiet ?= Good

[1/137]

Someday far in the future, I'll be up very late in my office, listening to the silence, and thinking "Man it sure was alot less lonely when we had those fans going."

Re:Quiet ?= Good

[Anonymous Coward]

"Man it sure was alot less lonely when we had those fans going."

Record your current fan noise, so you can play it back on the internal speaker of your future computer if it's too quiet.

Not just for overclockers anymore

[Starship Trooper]

Kind of like Honda shipping riced up Civics by default, it's pretty funny that the industry is following the overclockers. To take a look at the roots of water cooling, check out the definitive hobbyist on the subject, complete with alternate designs, plans, technical faq - the works.

Personally, I'll buy it when it's packaged and done for me, and not until then.

Coffee

[mbstone]

According to the specs, the unit will produce 0.3 oz of 140 degree-F. water per minute. Therefore, it should only take 15 minutes to brew one Standard 5 Oz. Cup of coffee. Now, if they can only get the CD-ROM drive to double as a cupholder....

Re:Coffee

[Anonymous Coward]

Therefore, it should only take 15 minutes to brew one Standard 5 Oz. Cup of coffee.

Don't forget that you need to start brewing a new cup every 15 minutes to maintain the heat flow. If you drink one cup of coffee every 15 minutes for the whole work day, you'll be overclocked too!

Re:Coffee

[Mayor McPenisman]

You have taken a potentially funny remark and somehow ruined it be badly phrasing it. I suggest you take a regular rhetoric class at a local college, or barring that, as much drain cleaner as possible.

Re:how quickly we forget

[arberya]

point taken. It was not a dig at the P4 directly, more at how hot those processors can get.

Kits already available

[Jucius Maximus]

You can already buy water cooling kits for your PC. (This company is accepting backorders.)

Re:Kits already available

[Wire Tap]

That's wonderful, but this article deals specifically with water cooled NOTEBOOKS. The products you are relating to us in your post are for other than notebook systems, IE: "desktops."

Why not better than water cooling?

[evilpaul13]

Like a liquid that doesn't conduct electricity, isn't caustic, and isn't extremely sticky when dried? It would seem to me that would make for easier repairs in the future and make for a safer investment in an unproven application of cooling technology.

People expect reliability out of their performance laptops, afterall.

Re:Why not better than water cooling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like a liquid that doesn't conduct electricity, isn't caustic, and isn't extremely sticky when dried?

doesn't conduct electricity . . . check

isn't caustic . . . check

isn't extremely sticky when dried . . . D'oh!

~~~

Re:Why not better than water cooling?

[PepsiProgrammer]

On a side note, Pure water doesnt actually conduct electricity, ive seen a Television running in a glass case full of Purified water before, but after a while the water will start disolving the bits of circuitry and become conductive.

Re:Why not better than water cooling?

[eples]

Like a liquid that doesn't conduct electricity, isn't caustic, and isn't extremely sticky when dried?

You mean like....water?

Re:Why not better than water cooling?

[BenjyD]

There are plenty of alternatives to cooling water - mostly hydrocarbon based, such as the Dowtherm range. However, water is the pretty much the most effective coolant(at reasonable temperatures) you can use, and has the advantage of being completely non-toxic and cheap.

Whats the point?

[red5]

With the power consumption on a P4 you wont even be able to keep the thing alive(on battery) long enough to over heat the processor.

Re:Whats the point?

[tftp]

When on battery power, the CPU will run slower and colder anyway. This trick is useful for the AC power - which is actually how most notebooks are used most of the time. Then the CPU runs at full speed, but the cooling may be worse than on an airplane.

water cooled cpu

[I Want GNU!]

If you want a water cooling system but don't have a notebook, http://www.agaweb.com/coolcpu/ is a good place to start. I tried it out once and overclocked my system by over 50%.

Logical choice

[SevenTowers]

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...

Re:Logical choice

[FFFish]

Is water the logical choice for cooling? I'd have thought oil would be. Particularly as a synthetic oil should be non-reactive, quite unlike water. Although, come to think of it, that'd eliminate built-in product failure...

Re:Logical choice

[diatonic]

I would think that when you need a water cooled solution for a laptop, it is using too much power. If a large amount of heat is being generated, then large amounts of power are being used. Then add to the mess the amount of power a pump would require to cirulate the fluid... I doubt there is enough difference in temerature from the hot leg to the cold leg to facilitate natural cirulation without pumps...

I guess you could run it on a fission pressurised water reactor and have plenty of power though... and long times between refueling (though you might not want to store it on your lap anymore)

-diatonic

Re:Logical choice

[abalacha]

(although I don't recall how exactly since they throw it at the air which doesn't have such a good calorific capacity...)

I think nanocoolers does not throw heat in the air. It works using themocouples. We all know of
some joints of some materials which produce an electric potential difference when heat is applied. This is alrady used to produce small quantities of electricity from direct heat sources. ( No moving parts, see.. )

The thermocouples also has the property of cooling down when we apply a reverse electric potential. If we put a lot of these miniature thermocouples in the Processor and apply the
correct voltage, then we directly cool down areas within the chip core.

Re:Logical choice

[khuber]

>Is water the logical choice for cooling? I'd have thought oil would be.

I wouldn't think that. Water has a higher specific heat and much higher thermal conductivity. Water is not "reactive", plus when you spill water, it evaporates.

-Kevin

Re:Logical choice

[donweel]

So what about flouronics cooled ala crayII. Why is this no longer done?

Not Ideal For Laptops

[Snoopy77]

"A water tank is placed at back of the display panel and a pump resides in the main body of the machine, she says."

Look if I have to lug around a water tank and pump then what's the use of having a laptop.

Yea right.

[dnoyeb]

Chalk it up to a publicity stunt. Laptops already are starved for power. You start adding a water pump to the mix, and you drop your usable time by at least a 1/2 hour I estimate. In any event, if your processing so much with a laptop that you need a water cooler, you should be on a desktop.

I does not add up.

hate to say it, been there, done that

[CheechBG]

As cool as it sounds, someone else thought of it already :)

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/pi/xml/00/04/1 7/ 000417piwater.xml

As one who has done considerable research into watercooled stuff, the cooling gains are pretty good as compared to air cooling. This is multilied by the fact that the active cooling system on a notebook is limited to a tiny 60MM fan, and a heatsink that is about a half inch high. If you can keep the system closed, it won't be too bad, however this will add considerable weight to the unit, taking into account the resevoir, pump, waterblock, stuff like that.

Water tanks? Nah...

[kaosrain]

The source of new water can be the output of your methanol fuel-cell batteries :)

Kaos

Re:Water tanks? Nah...

[ZigMonty]

I think you need *cool* water. IIRC, the water out of a fuel cell is hot (sometimes steam). Why can't the water be in a closed loop from the CPU to a radiator on the case. IMHO, we need cooler, more efficent processors not complex cooling systems.

This is not new, by any means

[jerkychew]

Dell has cooled its laptops via water for at least a year now. Take apart any Latitude or Inspiron over 800MHZ and look at the small copper pipes that sit in front of the cooling fan. Those pipes circulate water over the CPU, helping to cool it.

Re:This is not new, by any means

[SuiteSisterMary]

Hell, the Sega Dreamcast is liquid-cooled, as I recall.

Re:This is not new, by any means

[anonymous cupboard]

That is a heat pipe, rather than a proper water circulation system. The working fluid is vapourised at one end, condenses at the other then is wicked back. As there is no pump, it is very reliable but of limited transfer capacity.

Um...bad idea.

[qslack]

No, really, I didn't wet my pants!! My laptop leaked!

This already exists.

[jonnythan]

Water cooled laptops are nothing new at all. Check out these water cooling laptop articles, produced from a quick google search:

Toshiba

IBM

I know there are others, but I can't seem to find them at the moment. It's certainly my underestanding that there have been water cooled laptops in production for quite a while.

Re:This already exists.

[markov_chain]

I second that. I remember examining a beefy Dell Precision or something similar, and to my great surprise observing a bunch of copper pipes behind the cooling fan grille on the side. Literally, the kind of copper pipes one finds in the back of a refrigerator. My guess is that there was probably some kind of oil inside, not water, in case it leaks out all over the inside of the notebook.

Re:This already exists.

[kesuki]

Try cracking open an Inspiron 8100.
The water cooling isn't nearly as ambitious, and still requires fans to dissipate the heat.
This Inspirion 8100 also has it's GPU on a replaceable daughter card as reviewed at tomshardware. Too bad the laptop is designed with a really flimsy body, and still relys on Pentium III processors. I also like that it can swap batteries while running, too bad they cost so much. I also highly doubt that you can run the i8100 on a foot pump since the brick it comes with is rated for a max of 70 watts, a couch potato might have a hard time powering the inspiron with a bicycle without a flywheel to ensure consistant power flow.

Re:This already exists.

[pete-classic]

AFAIK all the Dells use water.

Water is not actually conductive. Water with disolved solids, noteably salt, is quite conductive. It doesn't have to be cloudy or "salty" to be salty enough to be pretty conductive.

-Peter

Re:This already exists.

[Yarn]

I remember reading a review of the first portable SPARC laptop, that had water cooling.

That was in Byte/UK in 1993

Re:This already exists.

[p3d0]

You're talking about electrical conductivity, methinks. Salt water actually has a lower thermal conductivity than pure water.

Thermal conductivity doesn't matter all that much for a water cooling systems, though, because the primary heat transfer mechanism is convection. You need a tiny little bit of conduction to heat up a tiny bit of water, and then convection carries that water elsewhere to a radiator which dissipates the heat.

water cooling crays

[LiquidPC]

What happens if you add water cooling to your cray, and you start a level 1 hurricane over your processor?

Intel: take a Marketing class

[gunner800]

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.

Re:Intel: take a Marketing class

[tftp]

As long as I can regulate the performance (and the battery drain) it's OK. Many notebooks are used mostly as desktops, but the owner has to travel with them occasionally. That's the fate of all notebooks I have at the office. Two of them are travelling right now, but when at customer's site, they will be plugged into AC and demoing our stuff at full speed. Same when I use them at the office. Rarely they are used on airplanes.

Re:Intel: take a Marketing class

[BigBir3d]

Jetta recently came out with a P4 laptop, in both 1.6 and 1.7GHz.

sadly, they do not sell to the public.

Re:Intel: take a Marketing class

[RFC959]

Eh...I remember when the (original) Pentium came out. The Mac afficionados were chortling over it, claiming that you'd NEVER be able to put it in a laptop, because its power consumption and heat output were too high. Three generations later... *shrug* If the chipmakers make it, someone's gonna want to put it in a laptop.

Hey! There's an idea!

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

We could use the natural thermal properties of a closed system to circulate the water, by having it rise to exchangers in the screen-backing area...

We could then start adding turbines to reclaim some of the energy lost as heat from the unit, and use that to help prolong the time between charges on the unit! Just think! The more hard number crunching you do, the hotter the processor gets, and the longer your laptop runs! It'd be a reason for EVERYONE to run seti@home!

A notebook computer that MAKES COFFEE TOO?

[Seth Finkelstein]

They don't realize what htey have here! A combination notebook computer AND and a coffee-maker! This could capture the market all-night, err, I mean overnight :-)

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Unveiled where?

[red5]

Hitachi Unveils Water-Cooled Notebooks[from the pcworld subjectline]

Generally wen you "unveil" somthing you show it off to people.
So were the hell are the press photos?

Re:Unveiled where?

[shimpei]

Here is an article in Japanese, with pictures, linked from a Slashdot Japan article.

By the way, the revolutionary part about this laptop is that it uses a mechanical pump to move the hot coolant to the radiation panel at the back of the LCD, whereas traditional cooling mechanisms uses the palmrest and/or the bottom of the laptop to dissipate heat in addition to the air fan. The idea is that

• a pump is much more reliable than a fan, because it doesn't move as fast or ingest foreign dust particles all the time; and
• 2) heating the back of the LCD affects the user experience less than with the palmrest or the bottom.

Also, before people start screaming about how big the water tanks are in the photos, the article says that the tanks were deliberately enlarged to emphasize the point of these prototypes, and they will be reduced in production models.

Re:Unveiled where?

[red5]

Wow didn't even know there was a slashdot japan.
The tanks dont look too big in the pictures but smaller is alwase better I guess.

Gotta love integration...

[Navius Eurisko]

Now I can have the best of both worlds: a laptop computer with an integrated sports water bottle!

Proper computing for the athletic geek!

Won't work -- tried it

[rjamestaylor]

After reading the Slashdot story I tried water-cooling my Toshiba Satellite. I'm sorry to say but Hitachi has obviously not tried this in the real world, 'cause if they did...well, let's just say that I'm using my wife's desktop to write this post.

Wow. Talk about Vaporware...yikes...

Re:P4 Sucks.

[gregfortune]

Hrm, that means my stupid car is fscked up too... Unless you have a really bright way to reduce the amount of energy lost as heat in the circuts making up modern processors, I think we should be happy for anything that allows us to combat the heat.

And yes, the car is a valid example. Think Energy_of_System(point a) = Energy_of_System(point b) and for some reason those silly engineers could not reduce the amount of heat lost in the system due to combustion and friction...

Overclocking.

[BenTheDewpendent]

Can we over clock em now?

maybe strap a larger radiator on the back of the screen and your ready to go.

No worry

[hendridm]

First of all, I'm not sure your laptop will last long operating at freezing temperatures anyway. Plus, it would take longer for the wanter coolant to freeze (even without an addative) since the computer produces heat. Why was this insightful? Funny, maybe.

yay

[prizzznecious]

Hot beverages wherever I go!

Is this new?

[x136]

I could have sworn that when the first 1GHz laptops came out a few months ago, They took one apart on TechTV to show the water cooling and all.

Hmm

[FakePlasticDubya]

I don't know about this. Just another component to break, and leaking water INSIDE the laptop would be bad. Is it really worth it?

What the hell ..

[OzPeter]

is a geek doing out in the desert anyway? Surely you must mean "virtual desert"?

Unreliable

[davidc]

It seems to me that this must be prone to leaks and hence unreliable. If the pump and chips are in the main body of the machine and the heat exchanger in the display part, somewhere there has to be a flexible tube carrying the water or some arrangement with O rings. (to allow for opening the display/lid). An irritating thing about flexible tubes is that with repeated flexing, they crack. O rings are even worse!

All those jokes about leaky laptops may not be so far off the mark...

Water is for sissies...

[spike2131]

...a REAL geek cools with liquid nitrogen!

Re:Water is for sissies...

[Ziviyr]

Yeah, like Nitrogen is as geeky as Flourinert...

That is so behind the times!

[BlackGriffen]

My laptop is cooled by liquid nitrogen with a processor that runs so hot without it, I can turn the cooling system off and let it double as a stove!

The chip? A Pentium 5 :D.

BlackGriffen

WTF? License What?

[dbCooper0]

The company also expects its water-cooling system to be a de facto standard throughout the industry and is currently in talks with several component manufacturers for licensing, Uchiyama says

This License/Patent bullshit is just crazy. Who's got the patent on radiators in frikkin' automobiles? Guess I could look it up, but I have a leak in mine, and need to fix it!

Damn Priorities.....

just what i need, a $3000 portable coffee warmer

[Indy1]

honestly, isnt a P4 in a notebook a complete and total waste? The main performance bottleneck in a notebook anymore is the harddrive, not the CPU. The whole idea of a laptop is to be able take it to various places and be able to run it for a few hours on the battery. With the kind of power the P4 sucks down, you can kiss that goodbye. Add in fans to cool down the processor and/or water, and more of your battery goes bye bye. You'd need DDR to get the most out of the P4 as well, sdram + P4 is horribly slow and Rambus generates huge amounts of heat, which we all know is a no no in a notebook. I'm sorry Intel, but not everyone wants or needs a Marketing Processor (which is what the P4 really is, marketing over engineering) in a notebook. Give me a cool running low power Mobile P3 any day of the week.

If it breaks...

[dick980]

...do you hire a plumber?

Re:If it breaks...

[TeknoHog]

...do you hire a plumber?

No, you'll just mknod -p and use some |-fu.

hmm, embarassing situations ?

[UU7]

Walking off a long flight.
No, honestly, my laptop just leaked...

Now lets see ...

[OzPeter]

What was that word? .. I just can't remember it right now ... (reaching for dictionary)...
effective? Nope.
effeminate? Nope.
effervescent? Nope.
efficacious? Nope.
efficiency! Yeah that's it. Thats why it won't work :-)

What!?

[Publicus]

Maybe I'm being silly, but is this really neccessary? I'm sure it will sell. I work in Government, particularly law enforcement, and the purchasing decisions are made totally backwards. Recently, all of the agents (cops) in our department got new laptops. It was considered important that they be able to transport these things so that they can be more flexible or dynamic or something... Anyway, the guy in charge of ordering bought the Dell "desktop replacement" laptop, which weighs about 8 pounds! The result? We have a bunch of overpriced desktops with LCD displays and laptop keyboards. The agents never take them ANYWHERE.

To get back on topic, I can see how this is going to be a "It's more expensive, so it must be better," or, a, "Finally, I can get the computing power that I need in a laptop!" I've had a Pentium III 850 for almost a year now and I just can't see how that isn't going to be sufficient processing power to drive my applications for a long time. Up until a few weeks ago I was using a PII 300 at work, and it was great with Windows 2000 and office XP.

The gist of my comment: In 90% (or more) of the instances customers who buy these machines will not need the processing power that is provided by the advanced cooling. My problem is when it's public sector buyers that are misinformed and willing to spend public dollars on gimmicky stuff.

Wait, never mind, maybe you do need that Pentium 4 to do email...sorry!

Re:What!?

[Ziviyr]

If it wern't for lightweight pistols I guess those poor police who can't manage to lift eight pounds would be highly disadvantaged in the field. I feel sorry for every time they have to lift a bottle of milk...

Fourtunately donuts are made of a light weight material AND have a hole in the center. :-)

And Toshiba already has a watercooled notebook

[Nailer]

So there! (Yes, I'm aware the URL is weird, but it works)

A Caveat

[screwballicus]

Wait a sec. If we're moving towards liquid-cooled consumer-level systems, what becomes of my plans to warm my house in the winter with my Beowulf cluster of 110GHz IBM PCs?

Re:A Caveat

[Ziviyr]

Wait a sec. If we're moving towards liquid-cooled consumer-level systems, what becomes of my plans to warm my house in the winter with my Beowulf cluster of 110GHz IBM PCs?

Just because it moves more heat doesn't mean it violates thermodynamics and destroys heat. You can route it long distances now, make your floors into heatsinks. ;-)

Repairs..

[Werelock]

So instead of ~$400 to fix a broken display they could end up paying for the whole unit when the water drips/sprays all over the keyboard and then down to the inards. Brilliant...

Personally, I'd have engineered the water tank to the bottom of the unit or as another drive bay. Gravity would force the water from a broken unit outside the laptop.

Re:There are a few places you can't -- Not quite

[willy_me]

The change in pressure won't effect the volume of the coolant (assuming it is water.) Only a gas coolant would be effected. This does however effect the boots used by the Canadian military. Their winder boots have a pocket of air to help insulate them. They have a little air valve on their side that needs to be opened so that the boots don't explode during air transport.

By the way, if anyone ever needs some very warm, durable boots - check out an army surplus store. The only commercial boots that even come close are in the $300 range and aren't as durable. The military has some damn nice equipment...

How is this a good idea?

[RainbowSix]

Watercooling requires a way to move that water, ie, a pump. Moving parts that require power, and the problem is that you still have to get x watts of heat out of the water at the other end. I think the current use of a heat pipe is much better than watercooling. The only "movement" is the phase change powered by the heat itself, and so there is less chance of failure.

Re:How is this a good idea?

[Ziviyr]

How about this interesting bit then. Heat rises, no reason a convective system can't be made to require no pumping system. Although an uber cheap pump mechanism wouldn't hurt anyways.

Chance of failure doesn't strike me as 100% when the spinning bits go. And the water should absorb enough heat to give the system shutdown warning should an RPM meter fail to detect a problem.

The ideal notebook...

[silentbozo]

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.

Re:The ideal notebook...

[mr3038]

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.

Sure, but only if you don't need a display for word prosessing. It's not like there's a tech available to make cheap enough displays that can be run for weeks with small battery only. And you have seen GBA - we need display that generates light.

Re:The ideal notebook...

[robin]

I bought an IBM Thinkpad i series s30 that was the nearest approximation I could find to your spec. It's got a 700MHz CPU and a physically small screen. The CPU is overpowered, which is a shame, but with the larger battery I get easily a full working day. Small snags are that all the docs are in Japanese (eg the maintenance manual, web pages ...), and that since it's ACPI based power management under Linux is poor. More details here. Expensive, but it is a seriously nice little piece of kit.

Re:The ideal notebook...

[mgv]

It's not like there's a tech available to make cheap enough displays that can be run for weeks with small battery only.

Oh dear, It would seem that my Palm is a figment of my imagination.

Michael

Jeez..

[Kranium]

I wonder how long the battery will last... like, 30 minutes?

Apple does too

[beakster]

The Powerbook G4 has 3 liquid cooling channels in the latest models. If I recall, the earlier Powerbook G4s had only one liquid cooling channel.

Re:There are a few places you can't -- Not quite

[pixel.jonah]

My dad has a pair of surplus US airforce boots with the same design - air surround and a little pressure relief valve. Quite Neat.

Re:Water tanks? Nah... *Ethanol* fuelcells

[billstewart]

Methanol? Nah... You want Ethanol-powered fuelcells. "I'll have a Scotch and Water for me and a Vodka and Water for my laptop here"...

Re:just what i need, a $3000 portable coffee warme

[FFFish]

Give me a Pentium-I 300Mhz with sixteen hours battery life any day of the week...

(I figure if they can make a P4 run four hours, the P1 should be good for at least four times longer!)

Overclock it!

[Bastian]

I can't see any downsides. More computrons, faster brewing. Everyone's happy.

Environment Friendly

[hyyx]

As I was reading the article, I noticed an interesting sentence:

Although the water-cooling system is more efficient and less noisy, the bottlenecks to commercialization have been that the water-based solution tends to degrade and evaporate during operation.

Maybe it is just me, but the idea of fueling my laptop with water instead of electricity sounds great! I can't wait until I can say "Hold on a sec... I have to refill my CPU with this bottle of Evian..."

Great

[fredistheking]

Now I'll have to worry about my computer overheating when I forget to check the water.

I'm waitng for those liquid sodium cooled laptops

[schmaltz]

to arrive... they're the best thing for preventing those nasty athlon core meltdowns.

interesting...

[smash]

I always thought the Dreamcast's cpu was funky, coz it was a liquid cooled Hitachi model.

Nice to see they're applying the technology elsewhere too :)

smash

cool when can I...

[metotalk]

when can I get my hgih speed palm with its water cooled cpu??? I really need it, so I can make my hot coffie any where that I go from my pocket/palm.

Soooo.....

[2nd Post!]

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.

Re:Soooo.....

[Surak]

No, 4.5 hours isn't horrible compared to the average desktop replacement notebook.

What we need is something like the previous poster said, though...screw fast processors...a laptop's advantage is that it's portable...most people want a laptop for word processing and e-mail...How many CPU cycles do you really need for that?

Re:Soooo.....

[scorcherer]

600MHz PPC for text processing is overkill, considering I can watch fullscreen DivX on my 400MHz K6 laptop. Of course it might not be enough for running Word...

Re:Soooo.....

[2nd Post!]

The nice thing about the Apple laptops and the PPC series (I have a G4 PowerBook) is that, when you do something 'simple' like email and word processing, the hardware has the capability to throttle down the CPU (from 600MHz to 500MHz) as well as insert idle states, both are separate capabilities.

Even better, if you have enough ram, the system will put the drive to sleep too. It really isn't all that far off from the original poster's wish.

My laptop, when I'm just listening to music (screen off, only an mp3 player on) can play for about 6 hours. This is an mp3 player that sucks 20% of the CPU, too. Anyway, the Mac laptops are some of the most portable laptops around :)

Magic smoke?

[asb]

It'll work until the magic liquid leaks?

If it needs water cooling...

[usiems]

...it consumes way too much power. Come on, this is a laptop, it is supposed to run of a battery.

Nonsense!

[Repran]

If I want a water heater I buy a coffe machine - not a notebook.

IBM's solution goes beyond just water cooling

[jmichaelg]

A close read of the IBM article reveals their solution is to use a heat pipe instead of what most hobbyist are doing. Heat pipes are sealed cooling systems that exploit the fact that it takes 100's of times more heat to vaporize water (or other coolants) than it does to raise water 1 degree. To get water to vaporize at around 25-30 degrees C, you have to create a vacuum inside the coolant pipes.

Heat pipes are an old idea - they were used in the Apollo program. IBM's key addition to the technology is developing a hinge that efficiently transfers heat between the laptop's body (the heat source) and the display (the heat radiator). There isn't much info in the article referenced in the original post to figure out just what Hitachi thinks is original.

Why would they want to do this?

[Rogerborg]

• the price and the size of the water-cooled notebook PC will remain about the same. Power consumption will also be approximately equal, Uchiyama says. However, the water cooling system should have a life cycle that is 1.7 times longer than an air-cooled system

So... they don't make any extra profit (probably less for an identical retail price), there's no extended battery life (so how is this "more efficient"?), and the only benefit is that it (apparently) lives longer than an air cooled system, a fairly intangible benefit even for a corporate purchaser, given that by the time the air cooling system is likekly to give out, the laptop will have moved so far down the corporate food chain that it will probably have long since been "recycled" by a sticky fingered employee.

Some problems with this.

• 1) Anyone ever heard of the fan giving out on a laptop?
• 2) Wouldn't it be more cost efficient to put in a 50 cent (manufacturing cost) fan rather than a 35 cent one?
• 3) Why would a manufacturer want to extend the lifetime of their kit? To sell less kit? Riiiiiight.

Technology for technology's sake? This is a demo unit, and is smells to me like some R&D czar trying to garner some media interest in a dying project. It's nice technology, but it seems largely pointless.

Leaks...

[TheConfusedOne]

Two obvious ones:

1) And you thought MEMORY leaks killed programs...

and

2) Going into that super important customer meeting after the water coolant just let go leaving a huge wet spot on the front of your pants: "No, really, it was my laptop!"

what about the weight?

[bergeron76]

Isn't water relatively dense? I believe it weighs about 33 pounds per cubic foot if I'm not mistaken. Even a cupful would significantly add to the weight of a portable I would think.

Corporate users

[heroine]

Is there such a thing as a corporate user? Do corporations still buy anything when the economy is being driven by consumers?

wait a sec...

[mattdm]

You're claiming that overclockers invented water-cooled computers? What about, for example, the Cray 1? And there's almost certainly earlier examples. This is really old industry tech, not some crazy idea the hotrodder kids dreamed up.

Why not re-use the heat generated?

[spectrum-]

Surely it would be a good ideato develop
this idea so that the heat lost by the processor
could be regenerated back into electricity.

This would beparticularly useful in laptops
in conserving as much battery power as
possible.

Re:Why not re-use the heat generated?

[Captain Zion]

You mean, by adding a steam turbine and a generator inside each laptop?

The Hitachi just has a heat pipe like most laptops

[DABANSHEE]

Gez every 2nd laptop currently being made has a heatpipe - its no big deal

"Heatpipes" are nothing new.

Although heatpipes are mainly utilised where things are cramped arround the heatsource, to move the heat to another spot where there's more room for a heatsink (hence its popularity in laptops, where they move the heat from the CPU to behind the screen, where there's room for a wide albit flat heatsink), there are a couple of Socket 7/370/A heatsinks that utilise the heatpipe effect. The "Zen Radiator", which uses the heatpipe as the core of a radiator like arrangement; & the "Coolermaster HHC-001 Heatpipe Copper Cooler", which has long (as in high) fins & uses heatpipes to help conduct heat to the top of the fins.

All this article shows is that PC World employs a laptop reviewer who doesn't know what he's talking about in regards to laptops.

Really if a tech mag is going to have someone write a blurb about laptop cooling they should employ someone who actually knows something about laptop cooling.

Denon has done similar

[cabalist]

For years and years (and years and years) Denon has used refrigerants (freon and such, unfortunately...) running in a tube directly through the cooling fins of the home amps they produce.

Why not on PCs?

cabalist

Why Not More Efficient Design?

[hotsauce]

Instead of duct-taping a horribly designed chip in with water-cooling and refridgeration units, why not just use a more efficient chip architecture? It's not like they aren't available. And the market's large enough to support more.

yikes

[gleam_mn]

And I thought it was bad when the water pump died on my car!

Signs of Nearing Technology Limit

[4of12]

Water cooled notebooks.

I recently heard a presentation which indicated just how difficult the situation is getting with respect to power density. IIRC, in terms of W/cm, todays chips are surpassing the output of hotplates, moving towards the realm of nuclear reactors.

I'd heard the switch from bi-polar to CMOS in the 1990s helped to avert a similar imminent meltdown.

At these extremes, there have to be some research efforts into finding some way out of this mess.

But maybe there's little need for laptop computers to have a faster CPU. What are you going to do with it, type your email faster? Once you can show videos in Powerpoint, why is there any more need for speed in these things?

Re:Signs of Nearing Technology Limit

[Ziviyr]

The guy who uses Quake to demonstrate what other planets might look like might disagree.

Why not just underclock

[GodWasAnAlien]

If only notebooks would allow you to easily underclock, then you run at lower power and not bake your lap or boil water.