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.

Comments

I have a better solution.

[robogun]

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.

Servers?

[AntiOrganic]

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.

Heat, Schmeat! What about Battery life?

[teamhasnoi]

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! ;)

Heat Pipes

[anubi]

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....

Heatpipes etc.

[TeknoHog]

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?