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The Fanless Spinning Heatsink
An anonymous reader writes "There's a fundamental flaw with fan-and-heatsink cooling systems: no matter how hard the fan blows, a boundary layer of motionless, highly-insulating air remains on the heatsink. You can increase the size of the heatsink and you can blow more air, but ultimately the boundary layer prevents the system from being efficient. But what if you did away with the fan? What if the heatsink itself rotated? Well, believe it or not, rotating the heat exchanger obliterates the boundary layer, removes the need for a fan, and it's so efficient that it can operate at low and very quiet speeds. That's exactly what the Air Bearing Heat Exchanger, developed by Jeff Koplow of the Sandia National Laboratories, has developed. It's even intrinsically immune to the build up of dust and detritus!"
This story is pure bullshit.
Airplanes have boundary layers attached in flight.
All you need to do to a heat-sink is rough up the surface enough that the boundary layer is turbulent. It's not like drag is an issue.
The first point in favor of this heat-sink is pure bullshit. Want to bet everything else is also bullshit.
How well do bearings conduct heat?
WTF happened to /.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I think my Macs have had this for a long time. I guess this is trickling down to the PC people now.