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Hitachi's Water-cooled Laptop
surfacearea writes "The Register has an article about the new Flora 270W Silent Model, a Japan-only 1.8GHz water cooled laptop. Apparently the pump and piping is all held behind the LCD in the lid. I wonder how much extra weight that consumes." But best of all, it means now laptops have
a chance to spring a leak!
This would be nice as I often tend to put my laptop in its insulated carying case before I turn it off. DOH!!
"Why did you take your laptop into the bathroom? Were you looking at porn?"
"No"
"Then what's that on the front of your pants?"
"Oh, the water cooling sprung a leak"
This will save marriages everywhere.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
You're probably thirsty enough to drink your laptop.
I have a compaq 715us which overheats like crazy. It reached a peak of 132 degree's before turning off. Keep in mind if you buy a laptop find out about how well it cools. I didn't research as well as I should have. - spamtest@cgisecurity.com
To me, this kind of thing strikes me as the wrong solution. I'd much rather see the emphasis on low power on low energy, rather than fixing this on the back end by coming up with a novel way of eliminating all the excess heat that is generated.
It's like saying "We found a way to reduce the emissions from SUVs," which ignores the fact that SUVs are grossly fuel inefficient in the first place.
Splish splah I was making a hack,
all on a Saturday night...
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
I still remember the DEC guys making fun of the water-pumping IBM mainframers - "I see your computer is down, have you called the plumber yet?"
oooh, imagine a beowulf cluster of those?
mmmm...beeeeerrrrr....
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
What about freezing? Any anti-freeze in there or strictly h20?
Walk with Music;
"My Water Broke!"
don't look up her skirt
well, right away... :-D
Will this really sell in a purely Japanese market? The Japanese are more obsessed with small size and light weight. Seems like Americans and Europeans are more likely to add extra weight or size to get a quieter machine.
As usual, slashdot has sensationalized water cooling, and made it seem that springing a leak can be common with a system like this.
Water cooling has been around a long time, far pre dating computers. While it may be true that over clockers working on their own PCs in their dads' garages may spring a leak, in reality a commercial water cooling system this just doesn't happen.
Springing a leak with this system would be about as likely as your new air conditioner sprining a coolant leak. It simpley won't happen within the normal life span, and assuming you don't run over it with a car or drop it down an elevator shaft.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
...if you were talking the larger real estate of a water-cooled desktop machine the mod people could surely fit a couple of fish in
I'd like to see someone make a coffee perk out of it. Maybe cappacino (sp)...
My other sig is an import.
Great.
I've had various computers; smoke, spit sparks, and make loud clattering noises before dying.
Now I have one that will start steaming.
I wonder if I could sue them if I spill hot water in my lap?...
With my dying breath, I curse Zoidberg!
That's all well and good, but what do you do with
the heavy water that results from cooling a nuclear
reactor like the P4? =D
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
Tom's Hardware Guide has a pretty nifty video on installing a water-cooling system in a traditional, desktop system. IIRC, it not only cools the CPU, but also the GPU (graphics processing unit) as well as the motherboard's chipset.
Said video can be found here
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
I am not so sure this is a good idea. One very popular place to use laptops (other than Starbucks) is on airplanes, which have pressurized cabins. It seems like the increased pressure might weaken the piping system, causing leaks and failure. If I get one of these, I'll use a vacuum case for travelling with it.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
bleh, I'm off to change my iTools address.. silly silly apple....
Fight Crime - Shoot Back!
And for those of you that think water-cooling is a fancy new techno-toy, you've obviously never seen the spray of water pumping out the back of jetskis or boats.
there used to be that old trick of freezing your laptop to get the battery to last longer... might want a disclaimer to NOT do that
I have torn a part a laptop or two. The first thing to come is is the LCD monitor. How is the maintance working if you have to tear it apart? How would the insides be accesible?
Why is it water cooled? I have used a laptop for years and things have bumped the screen and I have tosseed it around. If I have pipes in the monitor area, most likely they would break, thos water would be going everywhere. O don't forget water on the motherboard. Well, I guess if springs a leak, I'll have to buy a new laptop. Over $2000 is washed down the drain when my laptop sprag a leak.
"can you say hella lame?"
It's hard to be critical of jokes like drip's when most Slashdot people think that stale jokes about Windows crashing are funny.
I have to ask, what happens if you leave your laptop outside in the winter? I've have people leave their laptops in their car all the time. So what would happen this winter?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Here is more information on this laptop. It's in japanese, but the pictures speak a thousand words.
is that they'll take a dump in your water cooling tank, then if the tank ever breaks, you'll be sitting pretty in some watery filth.
What next for CPU cooling? Liquid Nitrogen! Haha.
I thought an interesting read on cooling was this technical blackpaper from arstechnica:
Peltier Theory
If reality was like Slashdot, most people would be (-1) Redundant.
My problem of having to go really badly while dealing with an overheating laptop has been solved.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
on the articles comment about having fish in the water tubes - it made me wonder - has anyone made a sace mod featureing water and fish for there desktop - i'd imagine this wouldn't be to hard to do if you took one of the glas case mods and attached a fish bowl to the side of it -with the top being inside the system so you could see the fish from the outside - i think if i did i in my system the fish would die from heat - but just a thought.
Ave Molech Setting
I'm sure many people are going to think "270 Watts no way, that's going to drain my 5000mAh 10.8v battery in 12 minutes!"
FRA: STFU GTFO
I know there's got to be at least one liquid that doesn't conduct electricity that would be suitable for this.. hey - materials engineers, little help?
"The solution can last for more than five years, the flexible tube can circulate the solution over 20,000 times and the pump works for more than 44,000 hours, the statement said."
And even if it does spring a leak:
"Plastic panels separate these water-cooling elements from high-voltage areas, in case of a solution leak from the cooling system. The Tokyo company also offers a three-year guarantee service for the product."
Sounds good to me!
While I tend to agree, the sensationalism of a leak springing from your laptop in the midst of a high-level confrence in some plush board room with a teak wood table isn't terribly likely. However, as noted, the coolant system runs up behind the LCD. That means that somewhere between the system board and the LCD, there's some flexing happening as you open and close the LCD on your laptop. Moving parts are potential failure points.
Let's all admit, how often have you picked up your laptop and held it by the LCD? For Joe User, it happens. Or how many times have you seen a User stacking reports and books on their laptop? More pressure on that LCD that's got the cooling system in it.
Apple had problems with their good looking Titaniums loosing connections when their cases flexed. If engineers don't look closely a real-world instances where users are going to flex things that really weren't meant to be flexed...you're going to find the wear will cause a leak. Maybe not during your warranty period..but, say a couple months after it's over? Of course then, you'll need to go buy a new laptop, eh?
There's a gimmick.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Is it just my ignorance or is there no H2O loss due to the heating of the water?
And no condensation within the case due to temporal differences?
I'm no Bill Ney the Science Guy...just recalling some sophmore science, and wondering about the issues thereof.
--Huck
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
It's like saying "We found a way to reduce the emissions from SUVs," which ignores the fact that SUVs are grossly fuel inefficient in the first place.
May I edit your analogy?
It's like saying "We found a way to reduce the emissions from SUV's which requires you to attach an air pump onto the exhaust (which needs to be attached to the fuel line for power), and this pump has 10 filters that will catch all the emissions, and release clean air. These filters need replaced every month, and deposited to your local toxic waste dump..."
Yeah, its a little much, but I'm bored and felt like typing something dumb.
In the hopes of stemming the flood of purely silly questions, here's the article which will answer something like 95% of the questions I've seen posted thus far. You lazy sods, I'll bet you don't indicate when you turn a corner while driving either.
Hitachi Ltd. has announced the commercial launch of its water-cooled notebook PC, a 1.8GHz mobile Pentium 4-based machine which uses a patented Hitachi system to aid heat dissipation.
Most notebooks are cooled by air fans, and as processors have grown more powerful and begun to generate more heat, these fans have become more numerous, larger, and have needed to spin faster.
This has also meant that fans have become noisier and might not be suitable for use in places like libraries, Hitachi said.
The new Flora 270W Silent Model uses a water-based solution tank, instead of a fan or fans for cooling down the processor. Hitachi announced a working prototype using this technology in February.
"The efficiency of a water cooling system and the air cooling system are about the same but the biggest difference is the noise the latter creates," said Masayuki Akabane, a Hitachi spokesman.
The water-based solution runs through a flexible tube that is placed over the chips and absorbs heat. The heated water solution is then sent to the display part of the notebook to be stored in a tank where it cools down.
The solution can last for more than five years, the flexible tube can circulate the solution over 20,000 times and the pump works for more than 44,000 hours, the statement said.
Plastic panels separate these water-cooling elements from high-voltage areas, in case of a solution leak from the cooling system. The Tokyo company also offers a three-year guarantee service for the product.
The new products are slightly thicker than existing air-cooled Flora models, in order to show the tank at the back of the LCD (liquid crystal display) panel and hence differentiate the water-cooled machine, Akabane said. The tank also be hidden, he said.
The products are equipped with a 1.8GHz mobile Intel 4 processor, 128M bytes of RAM, a 20G-byte hard disk drive and a 15-inch (37.5-centimeter) color TFT (thin film transistor) LCD (liquid crystal display), and are priced at ¥341,000 (US$2,941). The products can be customized to connect via Ethernet, a modem or an IEEE802.11b interface.
Hitachi started taking custom orders from corporate customers at its online shopping site on Wednesday. The products are expected to be shipped on Sept. 30 in Japan, Akabane said. The company can provide the product for corporate users outside Japan on demand, he said.
The company is still looking at market trends before deciding when to launch the product for the consumer market, he said.
Hitachi has patents for this unique water-cooling system, and is trying to promote it as a standard throughout the industry. Several high-end product makers are in talks with Hitachi for possible adoption of the technology in servers and PDPs (plasma display panels), Akabane said.
Does the water pump use significantly more power than a fan? I wonder what the effect on the battery lifetime is.
Vote for Pedro
Most of the laptop makers should be doing this. Perhaps it will help get the heat away from the "lap" and into the "top"?
They should put silvered mylar shapes (stars, moons, penguins,... ) into the water tank on the display, so that when the pump runs, the shapes gambol about. Or perhaps a blizzardy Winter scene, with imitation snow. :-)
When they get really clever, they'll have most of the case sealed, to protect it more from spilled beverages, etc. If all your peripherals and your networking are wireless, then the number of openings in the case does start to fall.
If they would use wide enough pipes (doubtful), they could rely on convection cooling at times, for low-power operation. Oooo, aaaa.
Even if you subjected the coolant system to increased air pressure, it would not weaken the plumbing. Water is an incompressible fluid, while air can be compressed. It'll take some serious PSIs to bust through a well engineered cooling system. Also, the technology of water cooling was invented during WW1, during development of fighter engines, so the technology has been proven.
Bad idea buddy. Although the tensil strength of the cooling pipes would probably contain the liquid, but you'd be subjecting them to more stress. Without air pressure pushing in on the pipes, there's only the pressure of the water pushing out. The only concern I'd have with the cooling system regards the amount of power it would consume compared to fans. You can never have too much battery life.Last thing - if you're really concerned, RTFM/RTFDS (Read the fucking data sheet)!
There's always a page describing the operating environments the device was designed for. A pressurized airplane cabin can be assumed equivalent to 10,000 ft altitude.
~A'Ëq'i4d)^'$ÊSÈòB
"Teacher, my laptop needs a drink."
Or better yet, when your laptop gets low, it asks for a Dasani.
--
I wonder what Crash Coredump thinks about this?
I believe the above-referenced liquid N2 cooling project (and others) used 3M's Fluorinert as their coolant medium.
3M has information on it here in PDF format.
Just don't drink the stuff, sounds nasty...
That's my purse! I don't know you! -- Bobby Hill
But best of all, it means now laptops have a chance to spring a leak!
That's some pretty dry humour, there CmdrTaco...
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
errr...isn't the spray of water coming out the back of a jetski what makes it go forward in the first place? (YES i know what squirt you actually mean, it's just a weak attempt at humor. shut up and laugh.)
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
than a laptop sporting a pair of 'Depends'.
It's funny--people are criticised for being too superficial, but I wish they valued certain superficial things More highly: case design, and noise. Too bad watercooling isn't the norm.
I like how my original tangerine iBook laptop is fan-free. Cooling is based on convection. I'm watching for future designs that are as "cool" as this.
Make these things like works of art. Clear plastic, flourine "trickling" down the backside of the LCD.... Ala-Portable Cray. Course, I guess enclosing the flourine in a plexiglas container like the backside of the screen would kind of hinder the liquid's ability to act as a heat exchange...
Bite me
Why did I even bother?? (my sig sucks, but it's better than yours!!)
Now you don't have to run Windows to have your computer leak like a drunken sailor!
> Aircraft cabins at 35,000 feet are not going to exceed sea level 14.7 PSI of pressure. You seemed to have misunderstood the term "pressurized." At 35,000 feet altitude, the ambient atmospheric pressure is considerably less than that at sea level.
Indeed; they maintain a cabin pressure at around the 7500' level. Higher than that, and the pressure cycles involved in takeoff/cruise/land/repeat will stress-age the fuselage at a *much* faster rate than we'd all want.
I believe it's Cray/SGI that uses an interesting liquid for cooling their "water cooled" style of systems. It's a liquid that's completely inert, and doesn't react with metals, plastics, rubber, etc. And being non-conductive, you could likely pour it over the system and see absolutely nothing adverse happen.
Can someone share any more details on this stuff?
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
"Why did you take your laptop into the bathroom? Were you looking at porn?"
/.'er to successfully combine marriage (or just having a chick), pr0n, masturbation-innuendo, computers and water-cooling into a viable, humorous and on-topic comment!
"No"
"Then what's that on the front of your pants?"
"Oh, the water cooling sprung a leak"
This will save marriages everywhere.
CONGRATULATIONS!
You're the first
Your @BEOWULFCLUSTER of $WIFE must be proud!
test shit
Ok. My japanese is a bit rusty, but as far as weight, it looks like it's a slim 7.5 pounds, or 3.75kg. However, it's a nasty 3,400 dollars. As cool as it is to have a water-cooled laptop, I think I'd prefer to get one of those mini-vaios for only 1,200.
* Only 1000 dollars per kg! what a savings! *
--------
Nothing can be done before the tremendous power!
RabidComics
Oh, it's always the Japanese. Small phones. Tiny notebooks. Next thing you see, they'll have smaller cars and penises, too! Bah, how's that for a Slashdot humor?
:)
Anyways, my opinion is, that this is another great example of Japanese innovative way to cherish their consumers. I think they're doing the right thing. I was just wondering, is there some other fluid that would be more suitable for cooling the laptop instead of water? Alcohol or beer sure wouldn't do the trick, so all you RMS wannabees.. you know.. just shut up
Thanks a lot, guys!
-- Mikko
"Was that you?"
"Uhhh, no. My laptop's cooler was burping again." *thump-thump* "goddamthing"
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Dboyles, you might want to check that link, its going somewhere else.
You are correct; my mistake.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
I wonder how much extra weight that consumes
Just the other day I was having red wine with weight.
Another decent comparison would be lawnmowers. People buy a lot of wasteful, noisy, polluting internal-combustion lawn mowers. The energy efficent stickers, too, go on the more efficient gas mowers and the electric ones -- the hand reel models that everyone used in 1951 get ignored. People don't really need all the power and convenience and cutting consistency of a behemoth lawn tractor, but there's a sort of keeping-up-with-the-latest thing that drives the market in that direction. Reel mowers aren't as profitable, either, so there you go.
You gotta think most people who use their laptops to take notes and write outlines don't need a fully decked out modern machine like the ones we're getting sold. They might like an efficient, smaller, market-specific one, if only those got made. Students really need something like an iBook, not a mondo desktop machine only smaller and less reliable. In a lot of ways a less performance-beefed machine would be better for most people: longer battery life, lighter weight, and so on. But we're buying (and being sold) into a lawn tractor market.
You'd think this would be changing as more people started to have both a portable and a desktop. Doesn't seem like the manufacturers see that middle ground between Palms and desktops, though. So, the "innovative" stickers get put on stuff like this that mitigates the negative sides of the ever-more-powerful trend. This tractor is a little less obnoxious than the others, give it the "Energy Star" sticker.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Put a spigot on the side, and someplace to put the filter, and you've got yourself the first laptop that makes coffee.
Wife: "What are you doing playing Quake III at 6:00am?"
Husband: "Just brewing a pot for the morning drive..."
Of course, when it first ships it will only work with Microsoft-brand coffee grounds, but I heard there will be driver support for it in Linux 2.6...
So is this your way of coming out of the closet or something?
No need to be belligerent, if you feel like sucking a dick or taking it up the ass, just go ahead and do it. You don't have to hate women just because you get a hard-on watching Queer as Folk.
Talk about pathetic.
So the water won't ruin your electronics, it just runs around the plastic panels and into your lap. Having seen a bit more discussion of that McDonald's scalding-coffee lawsuit today, I'm wondering just how hot the water can get at the CPU? Especially the last little bit after the rest has leaked out? Are we going to have someone suing the manufacturer because they were too dumb to shut the thing off and get it out of their lap when it started leaking, and got hurt by that final blast of steam and hot water?
I've always worried about spilling somthing and frying myself while working on my pc, i see Hitachi will now do it for me
it is actually a heatpipe design, which is not exactly the same thing as watercooling? Also, I am not very good with Kanji but I have a strong suspition it is not pure H2O they are using.
Why a water cooled laptop in the first place? First of all it's definitely not needed. Second the power consumption is probably increased. Third a laptop isn't going to get over clocked, and shouldn't be over clocked in the first place. I mean come on, it's a freaking laptop. I could use my laptop for gaming. But I don't I'd still prefer a desktop for a lot of reasons. I think Hitachi is wasting time and money in this. Professionals buy laptops, not extremists.
--I would think it's quite possible to use the case in a bi metalic configuration as both the heat sink-passive- and also as a thermocouple to use that waste heat to trickle charge the battery. Just because no one's doing it yet doesn't mean it's not possible. ..I think.....
%^)
We're well on the way to combining the two essential tools of geek life - the notebook and the coffee machine (or tea kettle for anglogeeks). Seriously: a little heat and water in the right place, and my laptop can act as a portable hot water source.
Combining laptop and espresso machine will solve so many critical workplace issues... like losing time to fetch coffee. Next stage: a dual circuit so that I can recyle my used coffee as coolant rather than having to waste time going to the toilet.
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