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

Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a computer in my bedroom that I keep on all the time. Lately I've been kept up at night by the fan noise. The noisy fan in my computer also posted a troll on Slashdot and killed my cat. Thus, I'm quite happy to learn that this problem is history. Soon I shall get rid of my noisy fan, and... *stab* Oh no! The fan got me! I'm going down!

Re:Excellent

[Zro Point Two]

I actually like the sound that comes from the fans in my system. It has much the same effect on me going to sleep as white noise would have on most people.

Or maybe it's just me....I mean, I am the one who moved right beside an expressway because I liked the dull sounds that come from cars rushing past while I am falling asleep.

Uber Sweet!!

[Trent05]

Looks like it could double for a space heater too!

Re:Uber Sweet!!

[The Wicked Priest]

They can ALL double as space heaters, regardless of the case/cooling system. Think about it -- the same amount of waste heat is always generated; it's only a question of how that heat is moved away from the hot spots in the system.

It does look like a giant heat seak, though. I wonder how hot the case itself gets.

Heat Pipes 101

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you who want to know

Re:Heat Pipes 101

[amorsen]

The system is not closed. One end is being heated, the other end cooled. Therefore there is a temperature gradient. Perhaps someone else needs to learn simple thermodynamics.

Re:Heat Pipes 101

[Anonymous Coward]

And perhaps someone needs to get the proverbial stick out of their ass.

It is closed as in there is no coolant exposed - a closed loop. Much like your car system or your home airconditioning is considered a closed system.

Welcome to the real world and not your thermodynamics class boys and girls.

Re:Heat Pipes 101

[Eric Ass Raymond]

in a closed system the gas must all be at the same temperature and pressure all the time

Closed system: no exchange on particles. Isolated system: no exchange of particles or energy.

It is correct to call this system a closed one. The water molecules inside the tube transfer energy in and out of the system via evaporation and condensation (+natural conduction through the pipe material) as long as one end of the tube is at a higher temperature than the other.

As far as the transient times are concerned, you're right in that thermodynamics does not deal with equilibration times. Why? Because it is a theory of systems in equilibrium. And of course there is a delay. Nothing in nature is instantaneous.

Re:Heat Pipes 101

[MegaHamsterX]

Build your own heat pipe here

Maybe...

[Black Parrot]

> The article's in German, but the pictures speak for themselves.

Maybe it's like the SCO comments, and someone can translate it by substituting English letters for the German ones.

Time For BabelFish

[asciimonster]

For the people who don't read German, here's the page translated by babelfish... Which is, unfortunately readable at best...

Re:Time For BabelFish

[muirhead]

For people who don't read the article, just continue as normal.

Re:What's the point?

[BiggerIsBetter]

The point is that your $20 dollar case probably sounds like a jet plane taking off, possibly overheats occassionally, and if a fan fails you're screwed. This one doesn't have those problems.

These also look a lot, um, cooler. In an ugly-modern kind of way.

Babeltry

[BrynM]

It seems Babelfish is learning prose

"Which one is to there still say, a piece of cream of the superlative. There I get damp eyes."

It sounds like a Peter Murphy song or something. Anyone care to tell me what

"Ja was soll man da noch sagen, ein Sahnestuck der Superlative. Da bekomme ich feuchte Augen."

really means?

Re:Babeltry

[panurge]

"What can I say, it's the cream of the cream? It makes me go all emotional"

The author needs to get out more. A lot more. In fact, he shouldn't be allowed indoors until he's had a cold shower.

You may check here for Building Silent PC's

[Delifisek]

http://www.buildsilentpc.com

Solid Copper pipes???

[NFN_NLN]

Those pipes look like solid copper. It must be a pain to re-route them if you use non-standard sized components. Isn't there a flexible material they can use that will still withstand the heat?

Re:Solid Copper pipes???

[Zemran]

When doing plumbing I used to have 2 long springs that slid inside the pipe with a length of string tied to one end in order to retrieve the spring. The springs were sized to fit inside 15mm and 22mm pipes. The spring was about 2 foot long. I could then bend the pipe to the shape I wanted and the spring would stop the pipe from collapsing. I would just pull the spring out with the string afterwards.

I also used to have a pipe bender which is a curved form with a gully to take the pipe. A long handle attached to a roller bends the pipe in the gully. It is easy to make a form like this using ply wood. Get 2 sheets of thick strong ply about 6 inches square and a sheet of strong ply the same thickness as the pipe you wish to bend. Use a jigsaw to cut the curve you want into the pipe sized piece of ply and clamp it between the 2 squares using g-clamps. Bend the pipe using the form and finish of freehand to make any fine changes after. As long as any major bends are made using the form any small adjustments should not cause the pipe to collapse.

The tools that you really need to buy are for creating the unions on the ends. Olives are OK but flares are better.

That would not be useful with these small pipes. I used to have a pipe

They aren't Solid Copper

[zinkem]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=75390&cid=6742 171

Re:The best thing is...

[killermal]

It's german for crying out loud! Of course it looks evil :)

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:Looks cool, but...

[GeekDork]

[...] most IDE hard drives are perfectly happy without any cooling whatsoever.

But they won't get old. Manufacturers and tests show that a relatively small (10K) increase in temperature can significantly decrease a drive's lifetime. There's not much needed to keep a consumer drive cool, though. A low-noise fan (80mm, 1500RPM) keeps the temperature of my drives so low that they don't feel warm to the touch while they get quite toasty without the airflow.

Goes around, comes around

[panurge]

Aber was kostet's?

Reminds me of the high power PSUs we were building back in the early-80s for I-can't-tell-you-about-that applications. That was for 60V 50A DC-audio amplifiers. Why do Germans still go for all-black, finned military chic?

Even so, the limited convection of this thing is still wasted capacity. It would be better, and almost as quiet, to have a chimney round the back with the fins pointing inward, and a slow air stream from a large fan being sent up it. It could easily be as quiet as a hard drive.

Re:Goes around, comes around

[C32]

Zalman is a South Korean company.

Rough translation, hopefully better than babelfish

[Henk Poley]

"Zalman fanless PC

Finally, it's told to us [uhm "(un)endliche Ruhe im Karton" means so much more though :-)]. It took long for such a product to appear on the mass-market. The manufacturer will be hardly able to produce enough to satisfy market demand. Though it's promising on paper we will now need to wait for priceinfo and more information. One thing is clear already, the price will be far below DIY construction sets, since Zalman is known to be specialized in mass production. The 6 heatpipes for the CPU, 2 for the graphicscard and 10 for the harddisk will keep the system as cool as possible. We are looking forward to this new Zalman case and hope to say say bye bye to our fans and noisemakers by Christmas.

Off coarse I'll try to inform you about this in the future [ "Ja naturlich bleibe ich am Ball ..." ???]

What's more to say about this thing, only creme de la creme superlatives will suffice. It makes you feel all soddy inside [ "Da bekomme ich feuchte Augen"]. Heatpipes (18 !!), and more heatdispensers than you will probably need.

It will be perfected silence because the case is fully sealed. It's the first one where even optical drives will be decoupled from the case.

Better is not possible!

More silent is not possible!

Due to be sold in october at
www.alternate.de
Maybe you should start saving money."

Case Details

[kaptink]

PDF specsheet on the case => http://www.sharkacorp.com/pdf/TNN500A_Catalog.pdf

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

[phusg]

Save energy -> here here!!! :-)

Ignorant? Hmmmmm, very mature of you to say so. But anyway, we've all been a teenager:

As has been mentioned you are off by an order of magnitude. I have a german widget which actually measures the wattage going through a plug. My nForce computer with Athlon XP2100+ uses in total 100Watts under full load and something like 95Watts when idling (which surprised me). My nForce2 with o/ced Athlon XP2400+ uses 150Watts under full load and again no less than 140Watts when idling.

I always like giving underclocking a go every now and again to see how low things will go. It's just as challenging/much fun as overclocking only your goal is silence instead of speed. Haven't made any wattage measurement of that yet.

If you want speed and low wattages/voltages, then I think the Intel Centrino laptop processor is 'market-leader' at the minute, although I doubt you could find separate ATX motherboards for it. The AMD Opteron with it's SOI technology also looks like a pretty energy efficient beast.

And of course if you're going to leave your computer on at least run a Grid client like www.climateprediction.net's. There wattage difference (from my measurements) really is minimal and their beta client is impressively stable already.

English

[heli0]

Here is some information in English

Zalman TNN 500A - Complete Heatpipe Cooled Case

From Zalman's site:

7/16/2003

Thank you very much for your fervent interest in Zalman's upcoming product.

Q: What about the price?
A: It is very likely that the official retail price of TNN 500A cooling system will be determined as about 900~1,100 US dollars.

Q: Where can I buy it?
A: Zalman's dustributors all over the world will have it stocked in the near future. When the time comes, contact Zalman distributors in your country by referring to 'Order' section on the upper right corner of this screen.

Q: When (can I buy it) ?
A: We are going to launch the TNN cooling system around September. Then, you will be able to order it via or to distributors in your country. Please be patient until the time comes. Thank you.

Regards,
Jinkook Kim/ZALMAN

Re:English

[AmiMoJo]

It is very likely that the official retail price of TNN 500A cooling system will be determined as about 900~1,100 US dollars.

For that much money, you could go for a full water cooling system with one or two large 120mm fans. Careful selection of the fans would make it very nearly silent, certainly below the noise level of my bedroon during the day, which just off a main road.

The Zalman case looks really impractical too, I mean the back has a door which you would need to keep open if all your cables didn't fit though the exit holes at the bottom. It's gotta be a niche market thing.

MoJo

More info in English

[MoZ-RedShirt]

is available here:

http://www.sharkacorp.com/pdf/TNN500A_Catalog.pdf

RedShirt

Re:Idea

[nbarr]

If you do that, you dont need a silent case :)

Re:Meassurements, Price?

[heli0]

"What does it cost?"

$1,000(US)

"Does it fit under my Desk?"

Dimensions: 400(L) x 286(W) x 607(H) mm

Fanless = dust free?

[slim]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if there's no air-cooling going on whatsoever, does that mean the case can be completely sealed against dust?

I'm sure inhaling the dust that collects in computer cases is a health hazard, if you do it often enough.

Complete manual translation

[Apogee]

OK, this is the complete text translated (and I have to add, this guy gets *pretty* emotional about this case, and uses a lot of colloquialisms).

Zalman fan-less PC

Preamble:

Finally, never-ending silence in the box. It took a long time for a product like this to be produced for the mass market. The manufacturer likely will be swamped by the large number of pre-orders. While its technical specs already convince us on paper, we are waiting for the first samples and pricing information. But one thing should be clear right away: The price will be way below any self-made constructions, since Zalman is known to specialize on uncompromising mass production. 6 heat pipes for the CPU and two more for the graphics card, as well as 10 for the hard disk should keep the system optimally cool. Let's look forward to it, and start saying good-bye to all these fans and noise makers right now. I hope it's christmas soon :-)

Well, what more can I say, the cream of the crop. It brings tears to my eyes. More heat pipes (18 of them!!) and cooling elements than you ever wanted.

Silence in its perfected form, since this is a completely closed case. The first PC case where also optical drives can be de-coupled and their noise dampened.

More is not technically feasible!

More silent is not possible!

From october on, this case will be available at www.alternate.de

So, start saving now!

And of course, I'll keep at it. (I guess the author means he'll post updates)

Re:Leaks...

[cybergibbons]

Heat pipes generally don't contain water but some other kind of solvent which is specific to the temperature range they want the pipe to work at. Generally it's not particularly conductive, but a bit flammable, not that there is enough heat to ignite it in a PC. Leaks would also tend to be slow and could be picked up by a rise in temperature.