Zalman TNN 500A - Complete Heatpipe Cooled Case

SlashCrunchPop writes "Zalman is about to release a completely fanless computer case based entirely on heatpipe cooling capable of keeping even the hottest CPUs cool. Cool silence, at last?" The article's in German, but the pictures speak for themselves.

Comments

Looks cool, but...

[Zog The Undeniable]

I'm sure it's just a form of one-upmanship. Look at that "hard drive cooler" - it's just a load of central heating microbore tubing, isn't it? I can't believe that's the BEST way to get good heat transfer, even though most IDE hard drives are perfectly happy without any cooling whatsoever. All those pipes really look as if they'd get in the way when you're trying to install an upgrade. And is it just me, or does that northbridge only have a passive heatsink? These things can get quite hot, and there's no airflow through the case.

Air cooling still has plenty of mileage - bigger fans at lower rpm are what we need. I have two 120mm case fans running through a rheostat, and the noise is insignificant compared to the little 60mm CPU fan (no, it's not even a Delta).

Re:Goes around, comes around

[shione]

Why do Germans still go for all-black, finned military chic?
are you talking about the inside or the outside?

I woulda thought they go for black in the inside because its a better conductor of heat.

Save enery

[tsa]

Maybe I sound very European when I say this but isn't it more sensible to try to reduce the amount of energy spent by the various components of the computer to minimize heat output?

Re:Save enery

[tommck]

AMD and Intel CPUs both require between 300 and 450 watts of power to operate

Well, I have a PIII 600, an AMD Athlon XP 1900+ and a 19" Sony monitor running on a single UPS. It claims that there's only a 350 watt draw on it when everything is on and functioning. So, I think your numbers are a bit high.

T

Re:Save enery

[Eivind]

Your numbers are off by a order of magnitude. I suspect you're confusing the total max effect of the power-supply with the consumption of the CPU.

Hint: The big box on your floor is not your "CPU". A modern CPU migth use 50 to 100W. There is no CPU in existence that consumes 300 to 450 watts like you claim.

A Question

[T-Kir]

...how much does this weigh? Would it fall through my wooden desk... the only guide I have to heatsink cases is the Mac Cube, which was a rather nice doorstop in the weight area.

Those are heat-pipes

[hughk]

Evacuated, but with a working fluid and a wick as a liner. It gives better heat transfer than solid copper. The idea is that it just dumps the heat into the housing, which happens itself to be a very large heatsink (at least the sides).

IDE drives may not need individual coolers, but they definitely like significant airflow. As there isn't a fan, you need to be sure that they don't cook or cook anything else in the cab.

As for airflow inside the case, yes there is still some because of convection. The air is relatively cool because most of the the heat is being dumped elsewhere, so a measily little Northbridge shouldn't have problems.

Lastly, zero fans is perhaps too much, but some of the ideas could be used to reduce case fan rpm and to maybe get rid of the CPU fan.

Misleading Article

[Ripplet]

Although the submitter got it right, the article heading says "Fanless PC".

Let's see, where are the fans inside a normal PC? On the case sure. But also in the PSU, on the motherboard, and on the graphics card.
Now maybe they have solutions for these, but this invariably means ripping off the supplied fans to fit the new heat pipes etc., thus completely voiding your warranties on those items. And if you just paid 400 bucks for the latest graphics card (which is by far the noisiest component in my current system), you might not want to do that!

So, while I certainly applaud any step forward in the quest for silence, the case on its own is by no means the end of it.

Makes sense only if seriously upgradable

[heironymouscoward]

The case is very cool (metaphorically) but looks like it will cost somewhat more than the innards of the PC. In that case, I would hope that it'd last at least 5-10 years, meaning several upgrades. Given that motherboard changes seem to make this pretty much impossible, I would rather buy a cheap case and stick the whole thing in a separate room.

For notebooks, this looks like a good technology: notebooks cost more anyhow and you can't really stick them away in a room somewhere. Plus, most notebooks really suffer from heating issues, and an on-off fan tends to be more annoying than a constant hum.

But best of all would be a way to turn excess heat back into power. Heatpumps of some kind?

Re:Goes around, comes around

[hippo]

Why do Germans still go for all-black, finned military chic?

I can't comment on the military chic but black fins lose heat faster than chrome roundness.

Apple PowerMac

[rjstanford]

You don't really need to go this far to achieve silence. At least, not for sufficiently small values of silence.

Check out the new Apple G5's cooling system. It uses a ton of ultra-quiet fans instead, moving high-volume low-speed air over the components. It puts out 35dbA, which is less than even a fairly quiet laptop fan these days.

Now, admittedly the cooling technology isn't as creative, but considering that for $670 more than the estimated cost of the case alone here, you get a nice IBM 970 processor, hard-drive, OSX, and a lot of other goodies, that's really not a bad trade-off.

And yes, I took the high end of the estimated case cost ($1100) and the cheapest G5 ($1770). But still.

Market Target

[virg_mattes]

> I don't mind the noise.

Then you're not exactly the target market for this case, are you?

Virg