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Another Water-Cooling System For Laptops

Posted by timothy on from the don't-spill-anything-now dept.

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.

11 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. mod by planetzeos · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I want to know where I can guy something like this to upgrade and mod laptops we all already own.

  2. Nice! by AntiOrganic · · Score: 1, Interesting

    When can they water-cool my shower? Damn furnace has been acting up for weeks now.

  3. I have a better solution. by robogun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If heat is an issue, instead of attaching a huge tank to the side of a ghee-whiz watercooled notebook, why not build one using *underclocked* cpus and air cooling. Or use the crusoe. I don't know about NEC, but my personal preference is that my laptop be portable.

    It seems to me manufacturers think everybody wants one with desktop CPUs drawing 20 amps, just so they can say Lookie, my laptop runs at 2.8 ghz!!!!

    Run Crusoe, it's cool in more ways than one.

  4. Servers? by AntiOrganic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This product is suitable not only for use in notebook PCs, but also in servers and desktop computers.

    I don't know about you, but I sure as hell wouldn't want so much as a drop of moisture anywhere NEAR a $35k Sun blade server.

  5. hot trend will continue by lingqi · · Score: 3, Interesting
    this is the official word from an engineer at a leading processor company. the company's name starts with the a vowel that is not "A."

    Seriously though, there are no new technology on the horizon that would make silicon run cooler, and the speed of core-voltage drop does not keep up with frequency bumps (heat is square of frequency for CMOS gates).

    at the mean time, i like to point out that even without water cooling, they can make some thin-ass notebooks*. I don't see why water-cooling is such a big deal.

    sorry site in japanese - panasonic does not sell their really good notebooks in the US. summary: ~2.7lb including DVD drive, up to 7.5hr operating time, Pentium-M 1.3GHz, max 512RAM, etc. They also make one that's 999grams (just under 2.2lb) that does not have the optical drive.

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

  6. Heat, Schmeat! What about Battery life? by teamhasnoi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    All I want is a laptop that doesn't have to be tethered to the wall all the time. Why are these things even called portable?

    I want a laptop that lasts for 8 hours. A regular workday, or a long bus/car/plane trip.

    If my 20+ year old Tandy 102 can last for 2 weeks on four AAs, why can't a new laptop go for 8 hours?

    And my damn 8600 is taking 20 minutes to copy a file! ;)

  7. Heat Pipes by anubi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It seems to me another way to do this might be to make the cases out of aluminum ( all sides ) and during the molding process, fabricate a small channel along the corners to hold a quantity of a volatile freon type fluid, so as to fabricate a "heat pipe". Aluminum is a good conductor of heat.

    If the thing were designed appropriately, you could have the freon doing a phase change from liquid to vapor where heat was being generated, then the vapor condensing back to liquid at the case. I'll betcha the major snafu will be the hinge. The idea is to make the whole case surface area isothermal.

    The intention is to eliminate pumps by using wicking to transport the fluid to the hot spot, whereas the vapor travels by pressure.

    Incidentally, has anyone looked to see if halon makes a halfway decent refrigerant? It looks neat that in the event of a fire, you could vent it to knock off the fire. Isn't halon another fluorocarbon? I haven't seen much spec on it for use as a refrigerant, but maybe another slashdotter has...and being I just posted the idea here, its now prior art....

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]

  8. Re:Hail ye Entropy by Zog+The+Undeniable · · Score: 2, Interesting
    CPUs are getting cooler. A new Athlon XP definitely dissipates less heat than an old Athlon Thunderbird. With increasing clock speeds there's a gradual increase in heat dissipation until the fabs manage to use a smaller process (0.09 micron is the current target, IIRC), then you get lower voltages and cooler chips. For a while.

    I've just rebuilt an old PII-333 for someone - now THAT's a cool running chip. It's the later "Deschutes" 0.25 design, so it's basically an underclocked PII 450. No fan and it hardly gets warm.

    --
    When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
  9. Truth Serum by malia8888 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    There were three words (conveniently put in bold) in this quoted section of the article that gave me pause.

    1) Water pressure of the electromagnetic centrifugal pump is relatively weak. If the thickness of the circulation channel is decreased, cooling-liquid flow is restricted. (2) The system is difficult to install as the tank, pump and CPU attached area are all inter-connected to a metal pipe and a rubber tube. (3) Installation of a large tank is necessary as cooling liquid seeps through the resin parts of the tank, pump and the connection tubes resulting in liquid reduction over time.

    These three "selling points" to me just stress how prone to failure this product can be. I read it as follows:

    1. The water pressure sucks. 2. The thing is pain to put together 3. And the water will evaporate in a New York minute.

    Guess the writer was given some heavy truth serum before he wrote this one up.

    --
    Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
  10. Heatpipes etc. by TeknoHog · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The Toshiba that's mentioned in the other link has in fact a heat pipe, which is kind of different from water cooling. Heatpipes have no moving parts, which is why I'd prefer one to anything where a fluid is mechanically pushed around.

    On the other hand, the heat still has to go somewhere, and these devices will only help move it around. In a laptop there isn't much real estate where the heat could be dumped, though it helps if these technologies are used to spread the heat into a larger area to reduce the temperature.

    But the conventional systems are a bit strange in having the CPU in the middle of everything, while the heat needs to be moved to the edges. Can you imagine a motherboard with the CPU on the 'wrong side' so that it could be directly against the case?

    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  11. Quiet projectors? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I wonder if water cooling is useful for making quieter portable data/video projectors?