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Another Water-Cooling System For Laptops
big writes "NEC has developed the world's first slim sized water-cooling module for notebooks. It uses a piezoelectric pump driving method. This water cooling-module enables a highly advanced, slim sized, notebook PC with minimal operating noise." Toshiba has been working on water cooling in laptops at least as far back as the year 2000.
I have a sony viao, and water cooling would help it a ton. So it has a 2 ghz processor, half gig of ram, 60 gig drive, ati radeon, dvd burner, etc... It can barely keep up with a 16 speed cd burn with the hard drive it has. When I play games at 1600x1200 resolution the radeon gfx card gets so hot i think it is going to catch the laptop on fire. :) So with good water cooling maybe we can have a world where there will be no reason to have desktops anymore.. just laptops.
I hope you didn't miss the: "This product is suitable not only for use in notebook PCs, but also in servers and desktop computers."
I am already dreaming about a silent PC in my bedroom (check out silentpcreview)
Hitachi came out with a watercooled P4 notebook a while back....
This is basically a means for spreading the heat from the processor efficiently into the large flat surfaces that are the only heatsink you can get on laptops. The problem at present is that the processor occupies a small area and the heat has to escape sideways through a limited area of metal. A liquid flow can transfer heat much faster and spread it more efficiently because water actually has a greater heat capacity than metal, and the pumped flow can be faster than the conduction flow through metal.
Looking at the NEC design, as described in the article, I would have thought that the risk of leakage was far less than water entry via spillage, rain, or simple condensation.
As for pumps stopping, what happens with modern Intel CPUs when fans stop? They slow down and so control their own temperature. It's only AMD CPUs that suddenly fry themselves.
The basic idea isn't even new. Over 50 years ago exhaust valves in high performance engines were drilled through and part filled with sodium metal. As the valve got hot the sodium melted, then the vibration caused it to move around transferring heat from the hot valve face to the water cooled guide. Doubtless geeks at the time worried that the sodium would somehow escape and damage their engines.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Forget water cooling.... Just use a Mac for a Laptop (1/4th the heat) for the same workload.
Or even far more than 1/4th when doing benchmarks such as the open source RC5 cypto benchmark in which a Mac with a G4 in a laptop totally crushes intel offerings, not merely from its barrel shifter and not merely from a couple altivec instructions, but overall.
Macs conserve batteries. Some older mac powerbooks allow you to run os 9.2.2 permitting virtual memory to be DISABLED saving more electricity from not needing drives spinning.
Even a commmon 1998 powerbook mac could play an 130 minute dvd on one heavily used older battery, while no intel latptop in 1998 could play a 130 minute dvd without having to swap batteries at least once, I seem to recall.
Most mac powerbooks never need to have their internal emergency fans kick on, even while crunching hard core mathematical benchmarks on warm days.
If you would have read the article a little better, you would have seen that he was reffering to conventional water cooling systems. The new system presented by NEC does not need an external tank, is easy to install and has twice the cooling capabilities as the concentional systems. Also, high pressure is not a must for good cooling.
I read slashdot for the articles.
There are lots of other coolants which are non-conductive... I once saw a supercomputer which was built inside a plexiglass tank and actually was submerged in an electrically non-conductive liquid bath.
Read the article again, and you'll find that the author (this looks very much like it was Babelfished from Japanese source material BTW) makes those 3 statements about conventional cooling systems, not NEC's new laptop cooling system.
The cooling system made by NEC has a small, high-pressure pump, the tank, pump, and CPU attached areas are NOT inter-connected, and no large tank installation is required.
Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.
That, and the primary advantage (certainly true for the non-intel, crusoe cpu models) aside of weight is their low heat output. If heat, size, weight and price are primary concerns, these are great machines.
Their smallest is the P1000, which weighs a mere 2.5 pounds, including a heavy duty battery that will last you 5 hours of real use.
Their medium model is the P2000, which also has an optical drive, is a tad larger, and weighs a mere 3.4 pounds with a battery that lasts you 2,5 hours of normal use (not counting optical drive use), or add 0.3 pounds for the diferrence in weight for the similar 5-hour battery.
Lastly, they have a faster model with an intel cpu, the P5000. This model has a somewhat lower battery life, more speed, and weighs 3.85 pounds with a high-capacity battery (default on that model).
Prices are low as well. The P1000 starts at $1200, the P2000 starts at $1400, and the intel-based P5000 starts at $1500.
To look at some user experiences, go to this forum.
I personally own a P1000 and am very comfortable with carrying it around with me all the time, with the low weight.
This system does not use a centrifugal pump.
the whole assembly is integrated in the metal tank/heatsink and powered by a membrane pump powered by 5 volts piezo.
In othere words: they are trying to sell it as a single component, reliable, maintanacne-free and easy to install.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you