Watercooled heatpipes (Give opinons)

Serra that idea woudnt work too well as the heatpipes have a working temperature range. A phase change unit would cool the heatpipe below its working range and kill the heatpipe effect. Still might perform better merely by the virture of it being cold, but it wouldnt be the heatpipe doing much of the work.


Mond, this is totaly off topic, but Chineese looks incredibly difficult to write. the only letter I know is "man" and afaik mirrored it means "world".

From the pics you posted I can see where the heatpipes will be located but I cant really get a feel of where the water will be flowing and if there will be any fins attached to the heatpipes.

The waterflow are presented by the arrows in the pic
I'm not quite sure if i will add fins or not, because heatpipe has more thermal conductivity than copper, the copper fins might just restrict the thermal ability of the heatpipes

Hmm.. maybe I didn't explain it well enough. As long as you get one end of it to be constantly below the temperature that liquifies the vapour inside, it doesn't matter if it's cooler farther up because it will not go that far. It can go from liquid -> vapour -> liquid in a very short distance if you applied temperature properly. The reason you'd want to use a special below ambient cooling system is that well, look at how long its taken to even get to where we are with current CPU watercooling... refining the process takes time and research, whereas doing a simple test like mine could let us know if it's even worth looking into. If it turns out that heatpipes are unable to transfer the heat as quickly as a decent watercooling system even with the vapour turning back to liquid in a very short distance (faster), then that answers the question right there.

~ Serra

I think taking a regular heatpipe design like the ones you find in the SFF cases, enclosing the fins in a kind of reservoir, water going in one side and being sucked out the other would would nicely... Or a kinda S pattern chamber design, pushing water in one end and forcing it around and through the various pipes to the other end where it exits would probably cool the most efficiently. Sorry for no drawings, I'm not artist or cad designer. You'll have to use your imagination. :) Just my own thoughts.

EDIT: Ok, here's my idea, don't laugh (ok, go ahead) like I said, I'm no artist or cad designer. Of course the placement of the inlet and outlet would matter, and I forgot to put space on the inlet and outlet sides for water to flow through the reservoir so that it passes over all the fins of the heatpipe. But it's just my idea on paper. ;)

http://www.madmikess.com/stuff/watercooledheatpipe.jpg

heatpipe has more thermal conductivity than copper, the copper fins might just restrict the thermal ability of the heatpipes. please correct me if i'm wrong

Copper fins or no fins?

Fins. Surface area always helps in heat dissipation.

Dear Maxxxracer in your opinon should i add fins?

Should i add fins or wrap a thin layer of copper wire around it?

why not just have the water go directly over the top of the heatpipes, so the water is actually in contact with the heatpipes?

tw33ter the heatpipes does have full contact with the heatpipes, refer back to the design pics

Hey Mond, great idea... I think. :D This idea seems to have a huge amount of potential. I just have some stupid questions, and thoughts for all the cooling gurus.

I was wondering if this design is for in a case, or laying the Mobo flat on a table. Most cases mount the Mobo verticaly, and I was under the impression that heatpipes had to have a vertical rise in them to work best, you know, that whole heat rises thing. If this will be on a vertical Mobo, wouldn't the heatpipes need a few degrees of rise to them to allow the evaporated coolant to rise, condense, and flow back down to the heat source? Otherwise, it seems that if the pipes are horizontal the liquid cooland would stay at one end and the "hot" end would just stay vaporized.

I was also wondering if having 3 U shaped heatpipes would be better, so that the bottom of the U is laying across the heat source. Would that allow the coolant more surface area at the heat source to draw away the heat than 9 pipe ends? It would seem (to stupid old me) that having the 6 ends of 3 U shaped pipes with fins parrallel to the base would have more water flow and greater cooling potential than forcing the water through and around 9 pipes as close together as your design calls for. Then the fins do most of the cooling, instead of the pipes having to shoulder that load.

I am not trying to crap on your thread, or to have the best working knowledge of this stuff, and I may be wrong, but that's why I am asking.

One last thought is, U shaped heatpipes might hold more coolant that just pipe ends. If that matters... I realy don't know.:confused:

So you're saying that having 1mm of silver between the core and the water is less effective than having metal heatpipes (copper, gold, silver, whatever) that are several inches long? Even if they have much better thermal conductivity, how can this make up for that tiny sliver of conductive material? Especially with techniques like impingement and whatnot.

Aren't we just being over-complicated?

I still have reservations about the efficiency of such a design, with concerns much along the lines over Overconfidence's; how can they be so great if they still have the limitation of a copper joint between the heatpipe and the cpu die.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mond

heatpipe has more thermal conductivity than copper, the copper fins might just restrict the thermal ability of the heatpipes. please correct me if i'm wrong

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Heatpipes are made of copper. Although you are not wrong, the saying "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link" goes well here. There are many weak links in this design at the moment.



The idea has merrit, but requires some very efficient design...

edit

gold plating as anther example will only weaken your system more.

i had this idea once too
but i think if i were to start somewhere, buy a big typhoon and sand down the base as far as you can
that way the heatpipes are superclose to the CPU surface
and then sand down the top of the block too, and put the watercooling stuff on top of that.

what you end up with is the big typhoon's heatpipes boxed up all easy for you

close, but no banana AndrewZorn ;)

i got a reply from that the heatpipe copperblock would cost like 100us, way out of my lead.The whole system would cost around 350US...unless someone is willing to sponsor/donate me some money, or else i cannot continue

hi mond ,
I think you idea is very good ,
I think all the heat pipe cooler in the market
have fin on the to help remove heat.
but in your case you are try to wrap the whole the
in a water captule , pay close attention to flow of
water as it's not same as air?

will I think the weakest link for air/liquid cooling now
is indeed between cpu and the block,
but if you can move the heat away faster for heatpipe
/heatsink cooler , it helps also.

your advantage over a conventional waterblock is that by using heatpipes you can locate the water to metal junction in a spacier area. Therefor you need to take advantage here and make the contact with the copper fins that will be comming off the heatpipes with the wate r to be huge. Think of those giant heatsinks with tons fo fins and heatipes. You need to basicly make a complete box around those fins and have water flow over all those fins or something close to that. A higher water volume will make for better cooling.

also rmeember that you'l want the inlet being on the lowest part of the box, and the outlet at the highest (hot water rises to teh top, plus it will get rid of air bubbles that float to the top) thats based o nyour current picture.

you could have both inlet and outlet on the top as well.

thatd be like 10lbs of water, = broken board, if you could even get it to flow fast enough to be better that a plain old fan.

Hey man I'm working on the same stuff right now, I got some designs, and am making heat pipes for that purpose.

Send a private message to me, we can talk about sponsors, I can get some heat pipes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Unoid

your advantage over a conventional waterblock is that by using heatpipes you can locate the water to metal junction in a spacier area. Therefor you need to take advantage here and make the contact with the copper fins that will be comming off the heatpipes with the wate r to be huge. Think of those giant heatsinks with tons fo fins and heatipes. You need to basicly make a complete box around those fins and have water flow over all those fins or something close to that. A higher water volume will make for better cooling.

also rmeember that you'l want the inlet being on the lowest part of the box, and the outlet at the highest (hot water rises to teh top, plus it will get rid of air bubbles that float to the top) thats based o nyour current picture.

you could have both inlet and outlet on the top as well.

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I have tried that, it will not work. By having intake and exhaust on different levels, the water resistance will rise amazingly fast due to those copper in between, and there was many dead spots. I am working on my design, trying to get a patent on there, I will post pics when the patent gets approved.

How about starting with a heatpipe cooler and convert it to water as a test bed? Something small like the Vapochill Micro. Unless this works crazy well, and in that case could you use something even smaller, like a chipset cooler? As long as the water can pull all the heat out of the exchanger, it should work right? Would this be too small: http://www.xoxide.com/cooler-master-blue-ice-2.html ? It seems small enough to not break the mobo with weight, but could it flow enough water to be practical? The other question is, how do you spread the water inlet and outlet enough to make use of all the fins, and not just the 3 or 4 right infront of the inlet?