New Chip-cooling Technology

BillOfThePecosKind writes "Researchers have demonstrated a new technology using tiny "ionic wind engines" that might dramatically improve computer chip cooling, possibly addressing a looming threat to future advances in computers and electronics. Purdue researchers funded by Intel have improved the "heat-transfer coefficient" by some 250%. I never liked water cooled systems, and this sounds promising. However I wonder how much ozone one of these things produces."

Comments

Re:Didn't we already do this one?

[Tyger]

And if you RTFA, you'd see that this has as much in common with those past articles as a desktop fan pointed at a CPU has with a heatsink with a fan attached.

Keeping the chip cool is not the problem

[AmiMoJo]

Try running a Core 2 Quad and 8800 Ultra together - your PC will become a space heater. Nice in the winter perhaps but not good for hot summers without air conditioning. All this will do is keep the CPU a bit cooler, but the same amount of heat will be generated.

Re:CFCs and HCFCs

[Gr8Apes]

For a given system, R134a refrigerant is less effective than R12, or other replacements. George Goble is the guy that lobbied for and lost the bid to replace R12 with a relatively inexpensive superior performing propane/iso-butane mixture. R134 performs worse, requires larger condensors, and has less heat carrying capacity. Additionally, should the condenser hit 214+F it won't work at all. The summer temps here regularly hit over 100, and in full sun on black asphalt you'll get a nice cozy 140+. Add in engine compartment heat where (surprise!!) the condenser sits....

If you've never had the pleasure of entering a dark colored car sitting out on asphalt for 8+ hours in full sun on a 115 degree day and turn on the AC and get hit with cold air, and then do the same with any R134 equipped car, you don't know what you're talking about. One last note, R134 did improve on one issue that used to be a problem with R12 systems: R134 systems don't suffer from freeze lock (that'd be where the evaporator in the dash gets so cold that water freezes onto it, blocking air flow and killing your cooling power).

So yes, R12 performs far better than R134. If you're willing to void your warranty, you can improve the performance of your R134 system by doping it with propane and iso-butane and approach the performance of an R12 system.