Didn't 3M use a coolant like this for a sealed PC without a heatsink and a peltier cooler a number of years back? I remember the coolant being something like $300 a gallon, some medium chain organic bromide compound Iirc? There was a video at one point
Why does the cost of coolant matter? Are you refilling it from time to time?
I intuitively assumed that this would be completely sealed for the life of the product as it seems like the dram quality matters.
Also, how much coolant would this kind of cooler utilize at one time? It looks like it might be like a quart or less. Certainly not cheap at $300/gal, but it might be marketable.
The cost of coolant matters as it will directly affect the price of the AIO unit as they have to be pre-filled by the manufacturer. Besides, if you ever do need to refill it by yourself, if that's even an option, then the cost matters if you can only buy it in set quantities.
@DCRussian: "Besides, if you ever do need to refill it by yourself, if that's even an option, ..."
It's not. You can't guarantee the required vacuum. There will most certainly be a warranty void if opened stipulation. They aren't going to provide the coolant to people that they don't want messing with it in the first place.
The rest of your point stands, but it sounds like ImSpartacus addressed that.
I was referring to customers in general. There are sure to be some people who can do it, but even if you have the right equipment, I think you'll have a hard time getting them to warranty your product.
If you're going to any lengths to service the system yourself, chances are it's out of warranty. Either way the only point of contention was "you can't guarantee the vacuum" and even then that was only with the stipulation that it would need a useful port. Not that it matters because I can guarantee they will make it non-serviceable.
You can't refill something like this, it can only be filled under vacuum using special equipment. Once air gets in it's basically dead.
The cost of the coolant won't matter very much because you only use a small amount of it, and most likely the coolant is just alcohol or water alcohol mix.
3M liquid has several options on boiling point. You needed an open system for the heat to escape. It was pump less in the sense that the entire system was under liquid, with all components contributing to boiling the liquid. It would rise a few centimeters above the liquid line, condense and fall back in. So you could effectively keep the entire system right at the boiling point of 40C. I think there was some very small loss per year. A closed system might make sense given enough cooling. Not sure how it would work for side mounted systems.
Well, the liquid inside the AIO CLC kit needs to be filled to begin with, which provides a fixed cost that will increase the final cost of the end product. Then, the liquid inside AIO CLC kits does evaporate over time, depending on the tube seal and the tube's thickness. Additionally, some users buy AIO CLC kits to upgrade or use their own custom length tubing for their specific PC, refilling it with distilled water or some other coolant.
Each situation doesn't bode well for an end consumer.
Right, because $50+ worth of coolant doesn't raise the cost of the end product. Whoops, there goes any cost advantage of ditching the pump (and then some). Talk about a niche market! Cost matters, and if they mass produce this you can bet they won't be using coolant that costs HALF that price.
If it needs near vacuum inside then this is just like heat pipes with flexible hoses. But wait... Most heat pipes work regardless of orientation, so this is actually worse.
Is the "custom coolant" water in 12kPa (~0.12 atm) pressure?
After cutting dozens of laptop heatpipes from models ranging from 0 to 5 years old, all the heatpipes are made the same way, a cooper tube half filed with cooper wax, no capillary anything, just cooper wax that melts around 40ºC and starts "flowing".
The issue is pressure. Most materials expand when they get hot (generally fluids more than solids). In a vacuum, it is easier for fluids to evaporate at lower temperatures. As the system heats up, more pressure is exerted by the fluids/gasses, but the copper heatpipes remain relatively rigid. This rise in pressure makes it more difficult to remain gaseous. Even when the whole system goes over the initial evaporation point of the system, the pressure build up ensures that the gas will condense back into a liquid, preserving the cycle. There are limits to how far different fluids can go, but that is the simple explanation. Cooper wax is just one potential medium that is often used in laptops due to not needing a vacuum to facilitate the melting / freezing cycle. Capillary action holds little meaning in this process. Cut open some heatpipes from CPU or GPU coolers and you'll likely find some liquid designs. Liquid / gas travels faster, removing the heat quicker, but needs a vacuum to work properly. You may find machined capillaries in some of these as well (I know Zalman has at least one design).
In any of these rigid pipe designs, pressure and coolant expansion has a much greater effect on movement than gravity. Hence, CPU / GPU coolers don't have orientation requirements. So why does this one rely on gravity. It's because the tubes are not rigid. They are very flexible and prone to expansion, which prevents sufficient internal pressure buildup. This also explains the rather limited effective temperature range. Lack of internal pressure means that at a high enough (full) system temperature (think India), the system remains full gas and the natural movement cause by the evaporation / condensation cycle ceases to occur.
> Cooper wax is just one potential medium that is often used in laptops due to not needing a vacuum to facilitate the melting / freezing cycle.
The metal you're thinking of is "copper". Cooper is a man who makes barrels. The inside of a heatpipe isn't vacuum, its filled with the saturated liquid and vapor-phase coolant. The "wax" doesn't have anything to do with pressure, it provides the capillary force to move the liquid coolant. Here is diagram explaining it:
The "wax" is typically a lot of fine copper wire, fiber, or sputtered on metal. Actual wax would result in no cooling because its not permeable. The capillary structure provides a lot of surface area which allows the capillary effect to wick coolant from the condenser back to the evaporator.
The fact that tubes are not rigid does not mean it must be gravity fed. They're not rigid because it doesn't really matter (the expansion of the pipes will be absolutely negligible relative to the expansion of the evaporating coolant) and this is clearly a prototype made from a watercooling system.
@saratoga4: "The metal you're thinking of is "copper". ... The "wax" doesn't have anything to do with pressure, it provides the capillary force to move the liquid coolant."
Actually, I just assumed that I don't know every thing there is to know about heat pipes. I've seen this stuff in laptop heat pipes before, but never know what it was called. I (apparently incorrectly) assumed that since the poster called it Cooper wax, that it was called that. Thanks for correcting me on this. In any case, I agree that no pressure control is necessary when this structure is in play.
There is more than one way to make a heat pipe, but apparently it is spam to link the relevant articles here (you can start at wikipedia). Most of my experience with heat pipes was not on PCs. While I'm fairly sure some of these used vacuum in the past (I feel old now), apparently the use of incompressible gasses is more common now. Increasing pressure rather than decreasing it would allow for the use of different carrier substances. The use of an outer wick was still common in the heat pipes I worked with to more efficiently return condensed fluid back to the heat block. It is probable, given that the build process is much cheaper when you don't have to trap gas (inside or out), that these are no longer widely used for PCs (does that make me outdated (0_0) ). I had thought that laptop style heat pipes were extremely sensitive to differences in condenser / evaporator elevations. Perhaps you know more about how they got around this issue. You can look up Variable Conductance Heat Pipes (VCHPs) and Pressure Controlled Heat Pipes (PCHPs).
@saratoga4: "The fact that tubes are not rigid does not mean it must be gravity fed."
If it had some structure to provide capillary action to return condensed fluid back to the heat block, I agree. However, I don't see such a structure in play here (perhaps I'm missing it). I would guess that they are using a thermosyphon here.
Does the performance improve if you install it with the radiator is installed higher than the heatsink so the liquid falls with gravity and the hot vapor rises?
I assume that there are valves at the ends of the hoses to allow for circulation in one direction and not the other, and that the two hoses are to allow for the coolant to make a complete circuit of the heat exchanger?
Bingo. Vapor and liquids have different preferences, so vapor will prefer to go up one tube more than the other, while the cool liquid will prefer to go down the other easier. Once things get moving you will get a nice unidirectional flow. You may get a little bit of back flow while things are just starting to warm up, but it would not matter for very long.
I am extremely interested in this. Previously I have stayed away from water cooling because it typically adds noise rather than removing it. You still need a fan or two on the radiator, and then you are introducing pump noise; which while quiet, tends to be harsher on the ears than fan noise.
But if this can passively cool up to 200W, then I could potentially pick up 2 and go totally fanless... provided I do some modding to promote a good thermal draft through my case, which should not be terribly difficult to do. I suppose there is still a fan in the PSU, but it does not kick on unless I am under a large load, and after moving from the GTX570 to a GTX960 that rarely ever happens anymore.
Getting a fanless draft through your case to keep the SSD and Mainboard-Chipset cool may be more difficult than you expect. At least with the higher performance versions of these chips.
Adds noise? What are you smoking? My computer is water cooled and it's near silent. Yes there is a very very small pump noise, but it's not high pitched like fans and the decibel level is so low you wouldn't be able to tell it's even on except for the lights on the case.
Your typical fan cooled computer sounds like a vacuum cleaner when it's on. There is no comparison noise wise between water and air cooling. Anyone that suggests air cooling is better than water cooling for noise has never actually heard a water cooled computer.
you often read on the internet about pump noise complaints, and people have different sensitivities and pumps make different noises, so I don't think it's that clear-cut considering the cost compared to air cooling. This may bridge the gap, being the GPU the noisiest to cool component.
There is absolutely no question that air cooling will always be cheaper. But there should be no circumstance, even with the worst failing pump imaginable where the water cooling system is going to be noisier than fans. If that has occurred then someone didn't know what they were doing. Pumps sold these days have decibel ratings in the low teens, often 5 to 10 decibels lower than even the most silent fans. In addition water cooling allows you to overclock while still maintaining those low noise thresholds.
My water cooled system is in the living room and it's quieter than the fans on the TV. Yes if the room is perfectly silent you can hear the pump and the water entering the reservoir (light splashing sound) but any other sound, including conversation overwhelms it.
Pump noise is also a major factor of how fast the pump is going. I've got a 35X series pump (not sure exactly which one -swiftechs 2012 or 2013 model probably). At its stock speed of 4500 RPM it's annoyingly whiny. Adjusted down via fan controller to ~3k RPM it's inaudible with my case shut; and only costs 1 or 2C in terms of higher CPU temps.
But you're using fans on your WC loop as well. Granted you can lower their rpm for the same delta T temperature compared to an air cooled solution, but with the best air coolers you can sacrifice a few degrees and have the same delta T minus the additional pump noise. I don't exactly see how WC would be quieter.
"I don't exactly see how WC would be quieter." How much time have you invested into WC research? http://www.frozencpu.com/products/19811/ex-rad-599... http://koolance.com/radiator-9-fan-120mm-18-fpi-al... 9x1x0mm radiators have so much more cooling area compared to CPU and GPU heatsinks, meaning of course they will be quieter. I'm personally not using one of those, because I wanted my desktop to still be semi-mobile without too much hassle. But I have a 4x120mm radiator and a 200mm one. The 4x120mm one is outside screwed to one side of the mATX case and the 200mm one is located in the front with the 200mm fan. It transports most of the heat out of the case and the little amount of heat that is inside gets pushed through while providing some cooling to the internal components (RAM, VRMs etc.). It is much quieter than any air cooling solutions I had, while providing lower temps for my CPU and GPU, which means higher overclocks and lower power consumption. But it is only useful if you are interested in the building and maintenance side of things. Otherwise, air cooling provides adequate enough performance for the price and time investment.
"Anyone that suggests air cooling is better than water cooling for noise has never actually heard a water cooled computer."
Chipping in as someone who has extensively built both types of system aimed towards silence, that's not true.
Here's another way to look at it: A computer using only 2x ~120mm fans (1 CPU fan, 1 exhaust, passive GPU) and no spinning hard disks has two noise sources: those 2 fans. With wide-fin coolers those do not encounter much back-pressure, so they spin slowly with minimal turbulence. The system is not silent but it is very, very quiet.
Meanwhile, the very same system with a water-cooling unit may be able to throw out a fan (exhaust and CPU fan are now one and the same) but has added a new source of direct and indirect noise - the pump and the vibrations it generates. Even if these are minimal, that's still an extra 2 frequencies of sound to deal with. The fan also experiences far greater back-pressure so its speed has to be raised higher to generate sufficient static pressure to cool well.
I have built very quiet computers with water cooling but my quietest systems are /always/ air cooled. There's just fewer noise sources to deal with and those that exist are much more benevolent.
Decouple your pump from the case and you have no to hardly any vibrations from the pump. And you are misleading when you say you replace 2x120mm aircooler with 1x120mm fan/radiator. Seems like you are only talking about CPU watercooling and maybe AIOs. That's not what most custom made water cooler setups look like. The least people go for is 280mm radiators, which already has more surface area than most CPU heatsinks and can even do CPU + GPU when you don't want to go super quiet. If you go to 480mm or 2x2x0 etc. you can get even more surface area compared to CPU/GPU heatsinks, thus lowering the fan RPMs you need to get the same results. The potential for water cooling to be quiet and powerful is always greater than air cooling. If people reach that potential is up to them, their wallet and their time investment.
As someone who has dealt with fanless lower power systems at work... use fans for airflow. If you get a set of high-end Noctuas or similar and use the low power adapter and/or PWM profiles, they're dead silent, and for that pumpless liquid cooler to dissipate a lot of watts it still needs airflow!!
I would tend to agree this is good for a GPU though. The only way I'd use it on a CPU (especially an overclocked one) is probably with a peltier.
"...thanks to efficiency and quieter operation...". Actually the best air coolers exhibit better temperature/noise efficiency performance than the best AIO water coolers. Really surprised an author of AT doesn't know better....
This is not "liquid cooling", this is "phase change cooling" and has about as much to do with "liquid cooling" (such as that used in power transformers, high power tubes etc.), .as my refrigirator does.
I'm going to have to agree here. Liquid cooling implies that the coolant remains in a liquid state throughout operation. This coolant is inherently designed to have a low vaporization temperature, so that phase change cooling can happen.
"In the best-case scenario, the higher is the temperature of the chip cooled down by such a LCS, the faster is the circulation. The theoretical limit of TDP that Raijintek’s prototype can handle is unclear, but different reports point to over 200 W, which is in line with traditional high-end and AIO liquid coolers."
Is this saying the chip surface temperature will have to rise to what would normally be an worrying point (with air or liquid cooling) before the cooling effect really starts working? Just how hot would the chip have to be before the system approached 200W of dissipation?
50c is nothing. Below 90c if safe for pretty much anything except SSDs. I had a GPU that ran at 103c-108c 8+ hours a day for 6 years before I replaced it with something that didn't sound a like a blow-dryer clogged with dust.
CPUs pretty much don't take damage from heat anymore because they're self-regulating. What damages them is too high of voltages. Stability can be affected by heat and even overclocked frequency, but no damage will occur.
I got here thermalright ultra xtreme 120 with the 4770k 1.240v 4.2ghz (bad chip) with no fan on cooler. iam running three 12cm at 589rpm just for movin the air inside the case. and my temps are so good. I only know if may case is powered because the led. I don`t have a single NOISE!
The problem with having to mount the radiator above the water block is easily solved by introducing a wick that can move the liquid from the radiator back to the water block with capillary forces. If one someone had thought of that before...
Oh right, it turns it into a regular heatpipe, something we've had in computers for over a decade. I am not at all convinced that a thermosiphon is a good solution for computer cooling. Full immersion cooling has some neat applications in high density data centers and stuff like that but this seems needlessly complicated.
As someone who has built both water cooled and air cooled computers my view is that water cooled are quieter if, but only if, you are watercooling both CPU and GPU. Unless you are into extreme o'cing the CPU, a loop which cools the CPU only is not worth it from a noise point of view because you will get virtually the same temperatures off a well designed air cooling system.
I am just about to build my next system which will have 4x180 mm slow moving fans (2 in and 2 on the rad blowing out). I expect the system to be virtually silent and I doubt I will every notice the pump. Often the noisiest part of a watercooling system (often deliberately so for a waterfall effect and noise) is the reservoir not the pump
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Ian Cutress - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
Didn't 3M use a coolant like this for a sealed PC without a heatsink and a peltier cooler a number of years back? I remember the coolant being something like $300 a gallon, some medium chain organic bromide compound Iirc? There was a video at one pointImSpartacus - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
Why does the cost of coolant matter? Are you refilling it from time to time?I intuitively assumed that this would be completely sealed for the life of the product as it seems like the dram quality matters.
Also, how much coolant would this kind of cooler utilize at one time? It looks like it might be like a quart or less. Certainly not cheap at $300/gal, but it might be marketable.
DCRussian - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
The cost of coolant matters as it will directly affect the price of the AIO unit as they have to be pre-filled by the manufacturer. Besides, if you ever do need to refill it by yourself, if that's even an option, then the cost matters if you can only buy it in set quantities.BurntMyBacon - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
@DCRussian: "Besides, if you ever do need to refill it by yourself, if that's even an option, ..."It's not. You can't guarantee the required vacuum. There will most certainly be a warranty void if opened stipulation. They aren't going to provide the coolant to people that they don't want messing with it in the first place.
The rest of your point stands, but it sounds like ImSpartacus addressed that.
Alexvrb - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link
If they equip it with the right fittings I can guarantee a vacuum... :PBurntMyBacon - Monday, June 6, 2016 - link
I was referring to customers in general. There are sure to be some people who can do it, but even if you have the right equipment, I think you'll have a hard time getting them to warranty your product.Alexvrb - Wednesday, June 8, 2016 - link
If you're going to any lengths to service the system yourself, chances are it's out of warranty. Either way the only point of contention was "you can't guarantee the vacuum" and even then that was only with the stipulation that it would need a useful port. Not that it matters because I can guarantee they will make it non-serviceable.saratoga4 - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
You can't refill something like this, it can only be filled under vacuum using special equipment. Once air gets in it's basically dead.The cost of the coolant won't matter very much because you only use a small amount of it, and most likely the coolant is just alcohol or water alcohol mix.
bananaforscale - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link
Syringe through a silicone or similar cap that seals after you withdraw the needle. Problem solved.Jorsher - Monday, June 6, 2016 - link
A vacuum will decrease if you add more to the system. A vacuum will attempt to equalize pressure with the syringe.It's not quite as simple as you think.
ipkh - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
3M liquid has several options on boiling point.You needed an open system for the heat to escape. It was pump less in the sense that the entire system was under liquid, with all components contributing to boiling the liquid. It would rise a few centimeters above the liquid line, condense and fall back in. So you could effectively keep the entire system right at the boiling point of 40C. I think there was some very small loss per year.
A closed system might make sense given enough cooling. Not sure how it would work for side mounted systems.
JoeyJoJo123 - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
Well, the liquid inside the AIO CLC kit needs to be filled to begin with, which provides a fixed cost that will increase the final cost of the end product. Then, the liquid inside AIO CLC kits does evaporate over time, depending on the tube seal and the tube's thickness. Additionally, some users buy AIO CLC kits to upgrade or use their own custom length tubing for their specific PC, refilling it with distilled water or some other coolant.Each situation doesn't bode well for an end consumer.
Murloc - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
that kind of user buys a water block, not an AIO.Alexvrb - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link
Right, because $50+ worth of coolant doesn't raise the cost of the end product. Whoops, there goes any cost advantage of ditching the pump (and then some). Talk about a niche market! Cost matters, and if they mass produce this you can bet they won't be using coolant that costs HALF that price.HomeworldFound - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
You mean Fluorinert right?vanilla_gorilla - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
Sooo ... is it weird the picture in this article is clearly cropped from the silverstone computex link?Anato - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
If it needs near vacuum inside then this is just like heat pipes with flexible hoses. But wait... Most heat pipes work regardless of orientation, so this is actually worse.Is the "custom coolant" water in 12kPa (~0.12 atm) pressure?
saratoga4 - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
This is in fact a type of heatpipe, although one that is gravity driven rather than capillary driven.keeepcool - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
After cutting dozens of laptop heatpipes from models ranging from 0 to 5 years old, all the heatpipes are made the same way, a cooper tube half filed with cooper wax, no capillary anything, just cooper wax that melts around 40ºC and starts "flowing".saratoga4 - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
They're made of copper, and the "wax" isn't a wax, it is a wick that provides the capillary action.BurntMyBacon - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
The issue is pressure. Most materials expand when they get hot (generally fluids more than solids). In a vacuum, it is easier for fluids to evaporate at lower temperatures. As the system heats up, more pressure is exerted by the fluids/gasses, but the copper heatpipes remain relatively rigid. This rise in pressure makes it more difficult to remain gaseous. Even when the whole system goes over the initial evaporation point of the system, the pressure build up ensures that the gas will condense back into a liquid, preserving the cycle. There are limits to how far different fluids can go, but that is the simple explanation. Cooper wax is just one potential medium that is often used in laptops due to not needing a vacuum to facilitate the melting / freezing cycle. Capillary action holds little meaning in this process. Cut open some heatpipes from CPU or GPU coolers and you'll likely find some liquid designs. Liquid / gas travels faster, removing the heat quicker, but needs a vacuum to work properly. You may find machined capillaries in some of these as well (I know Zalman has at least one design).In any of these rigid pipe designs, pressure and coolant expansion has a much greater effect on movement than gravity. Hence, CPU / GPU coolers don't have orientation requirements. So why does this one rely on gravity. It's because the tubes are not rigid. They are very flexible and prone to expansion, which prevents sufficient internal pressure buildup. This also explains the rather limited effective temperature range. Lack of internal pressure means that at a high enough (full) system temperature (think India), the system remains full gas and the natural movement cause by the evaporation / condensation cycle ceases to occur.
saratoga4 - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
> Cooper wax is just one potential medium that is often used in laptops due to not needing a vacuum to facilitate the melting / freezing cycle.The metal you're thinking of is "copper". Cooper is a man who makes barrels. The inside of a heatpipe isn't vacuum, its filled with the saturated liquid and vapor-phase coolant. The "wax" doesn't have anything to do with pressure, it provides the capillary force to move the liquid coolant. Here is diagram explaining it:
http://image.slidesharecdn.com/heatpipe036-1306182...
The "wax" is typically a lot of fine copper wire, fiber, or sputtered on metal. Actual wax would result in no cooling because its not permeable. The capillary structure provides a lot of surface area which allows the capillary effect to wick coolant from the condenser back to the evaporator.
The fact that tubes are not rigid does not mean it must be gravity fed. They're not rigid because it doesn't really matter (the expansion of the pipes will be absolutely negligible relative to the expansion of the evaporating coolant) and this is clearly a prototype made from a watercooling system.
Spunjji - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link
Thanks for the info, Saratoga4.BurntMyBacon - Monday, June 6, 2016 - link
@saratoga4: "The metal you're thinking of is "copper". ... The "wax" doesn't have anything to do with pressure, it provides the capillary force to move the liquid coolant."Actually, I just assumed that I don't know every thing there is to know about heat pipes. I've seen this stuff in laptop heat pipes before, but never know what it was called. I (apparently incorrectly) assumed that since the poster called it Cooper wax, that it was called that. Thanks for correcting me on this. In any case, I agree that no pressure control is necessary when this structure is in play.
BurntMyBacon - Monday, June 6, 2016 - link
There is more than one way to make a heat pipe, but apparently it is spam to link the relevant articles here (you can start at wikipedia). Most of my experience with heat pipes was not on PCs. While I'm fairly sure some of these used vacuum in the past (I feel old now), apparently the use of incompressible gasses is more common now. Increasing pressure rather than decreasing it would allow for the use of different carrier substances. The use of an outer wick was still common in the heat pipes I worked with to more efficiently return condensed fluid back to the heat block. It is probable, given that the build process is much cheaper when you don't have to trap gas (inside or out), that these are no longer widely used for PCs (does that make me outdated (0_0) ). I had thought that laptop style heat pipes were extremely sensitive to differences in condenser / evaporator elevations. Perhaps you know more about how they got around this issue. You can look up Variable Conductance Heat Pipes (VCHPs) and Pressure Controlled Heat Pipes (PCHPs).@saratoga4: "The fact that tubes are not rigid does not mean it must be gravity fed."
If it had some structure to provide capillary action to return condensed fluid back to the heat block, I agree. However, I don't see such a structure in play here (perhaps I'm missing it). I would guess that they are using a thermosyphon here.
samer1970 - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
heatpipes are not flixable and add weight on the motherboard ...this one the weight is on the case ... not the motherboard .
invinciblegod - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
Does the performance improve if you install it with the radiator is installed higher than the heatsink so the liquid falls with gravity and the hot vapor rises?DanNeely - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
According to the article this is an actual requirement of the design.Shadowmaster625 - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
Wouldnt the steam just bubble up both tubes simultaneously? How would you get flow? Why even have two tubes?londedoganet - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
I assume that there are valves at the ends of the hoses to allow for circulation in one direction and not the other, and that the two hoses are to allow for the coolant to make a complete circuit of the heat exchanger?QB - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
If I recall my thermal dynamics correctly, it's actually the different diameter tubes that creates the direction of flow.CaedenV - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
Bingo. Vapor and liquids have different preferences, so vapor will prefer to go up one tube more than the other, while the cool liquid will prefer to go down the other easier. Once things get moving you will get a nice unidirectional flow. You may get a little bit of back flow while things are just starting to warm up, but it would not matter for very long.chuttney1 - Monday, June 6, 2016 - link
This cooler is using the principle of thermosiphoning. The less dense fluid will flow only one way if engineer correctly for cooling.londedoganet - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link
Cool. Thanks for the insight.HomeworldFound - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
You mean something like the CoolIT Freezer?http://www.guru3d.com/miraserver/images/2007/cooli...
CaedenV - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
I am extremely interested in this. Previously I have stayed away from water cooling because it typically adds noise rather than removing it. You still need a fan or two on the radiator, and then you are introducing pump noise; which while quiet, tends to be harsher on the ears than fan noise.But if this can passively cool up to 200W, then I could potentially pick up 2 and go totally fanless... provided I do some modding to promote a good thermal draft through my case, which should not be terribly difficult to do. I suppose there is still a fan in the PSU, but it does not kick on unless I am under a large load, and after moving from the GTX570 to a GTX960 that rarely ever happens anymore.
CaedenV - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
... a GTX1070 supposedly only drinks 150W at stock... hmmmShieTar - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
Getting a fanless draft through your case to keep the SSD and Mainboard-Chipset cool may be more difficult than you expect. At least with the higher performance versions of these chips.rahvin - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
Adds noise? What are you smoking? My computer is water cooled and it's near silent. Yes there is a very very small pump noise, but it's not high pitched like fans and the decibel level is so low you wouldn't be able to tell it's even on except for the lights on the case.Your typical fan cooled computer sounds like a vacuum cleaner when it's on. There is no comparison noise wise between water and air cooling. Anyone that suggests air cooling is better than water cooling for noise has never actually heard a water cooled computer.
Murloc - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
you often read on the internet about pump noise complaints, and people have different sensitivities and pumps make different noises, so I don't think it's that clear-cut considering the cost compared to air cooling.This may bridge the gap, being the GPU the noisiest to cool component.
rahvin - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
There is absolutely no question that air cooling will always be cheaper. But there should be no circumstance, even with the worst failing pump imaginable where the water cooling system is going to be noisier than fans. If that has occurred then someone didn't know what they were doing. Pumps sold these days have decibel ratings in the low teens, often 5 to 10 decibels lower than even the most silent fans. In addition water cooling allows you to overclock while still maintaining those low noise thresholds.My water cooled system is in the living room and it's quieter than the fans on the TV. Yes if the room is perfectly silent you can hear the pump and the water entering the reservoir (light splashing sound) but any other sound, including conversation overwhelms it.
DanNeely - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
Pump noise is also a major factor of how fast the pump is going. I've got a 35X series pump (not sure exactly which one -swiftechs 2012 or 2013 model probably). At its stock speed of 4500 RPM it's annoyingly whiny. Adjusted down via fan controller to ~3k RPM it's inaudible with my case shut; and only costs 1 or 2C in terms of higher CPU temps.maximumGPU - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link
But you're using fans on your WC loop as well. Granted you can lower their rpm for the same delta T temperature compared to an air cooled solution, but with the best air coolers you can sacrifice a few degrees and have the same delta T minus the additional pump noise. I don't exactly see how WC would be quieter.Death666Angel - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link
"I don't exactly see how WC would be quieter."How much time have you invested into WC research?
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/19811/ex-rad-599...
http://koolance.com/radiator-9-fan-120mm-18-fpi-al...
9x1x0mm radiators have so much more cooling area compared to CPU and GPU heatsinks, meaning of course they will be quieter.
I'm personally not using one of those, because I wanted my desktop to still be semi-mobile without too much hassle. But I have a 4x120mm radiator and a 200mm one. The 4x120mm one is outside screwed to one side of the mATX case and the 200mm one is located in the front with the 200mm fan. It transports most of the heat out of the case and the little amount of heat that is inside gets pushed through while providing some cooling to the internal components (RAM, VRMs etc.). It is much quieter than any air cooling solutions I had, while providing lower temps for my CPU and GPU, which means higher overclocks and lower power consumption. But it is only useful if you are interested in the building and maintenance side of things. Otherwise, air cooling provides adequate enough performance for the price and time investment.
Spunjji - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link
"Anyone that suggests air cooling is better than water cooling for noise has never actually heard a water cooled computer."Chipping in as someone who has extensively built both types of system aimed towards silence, that's not true.
Here's another way to look at it: A computer using only 2x ~120mm fans (1 CPU fan, 1 exhaust, passive GPU) and no spinning hard disks has two noise sources: those 2 fans. With wide-fin coolers those do not encounter much back-pressure, so they spin slowly with minimal turbulence. The system is not silent but it is very, very quiet.
Meanwhile, the very same system with a water-cooling unit may be able to throw out a fan (exhaust and CPU fan are now one and the same) but has added a new source of direct and indirect noise - the pump and the vibrations it generates. Even if these are minimal, that's still an extra 2 frequencies of sound to deal with. The fan also experiences far greater back-pressure so its speed has to be raised higher to generate sufficient static pressure to cool well.
I have built very quiet computers with water cooling but my quietest systems are /always/ air cooled. There's just fewer noise sources to deal with and those that exist are much more benevolent.
Death666Angel - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link
Decouple your pump from the case and you have no to hardly any vibrations from the pump. And you are misleading when you say you replace 2x120mm aircooler with 1x120mm fan/radiator. Seems like you are only talking about CPU watercooling and maybe AIOs. That's not what most custom made water cooler setups look like. The least people go for is 280mm radiators, which already has more surface area than most CPU heatsinks and can even do CPU + GPU when you don't want to go super quiet. If you go to 480mm or 2x2x0 etc. you can get even more surface area compared to CPU/GPU heatsinks, thus lowering the fan RPMs you need to get the same results. The potential for water cooling to be quiet and powerful is always greater than air cooling. If people reach that potential is up to them, their wallet and their time investment.Alexvrb - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link
As someone who has dealt with fanless lower power systems at work... use fans for airflow. If you get a set of high-end Noctuas or similar and use the low power adapter and/or PWM profiles, they're dead silent, and for that pumpless liquid cooler to dissipate a lot of watts it still needs airflow!!I would tend to agree this is good for a GPU though. The only way I'd use it on a CPU (especially an overclocked one) is probably with a peltier.
djayjp - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
"...thanks to efficiency and quieter operation...". Actually the best air coolers exhibit better temperature/noise efficiency performance than the best AIO water coolers. Really surprised an author of AT doesn't know better....ShieTar - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
For normal setups yes, but for more excessive CPU overclocking, All-in-One with two radiators is sometimes quieter than the big tower coolers.Arnulf - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
This is not "liquid cooling", this is "phase change cooling" and has about as much to do with "liquid cooling" (such as that used in power transformers, high power tubes etc.), .as my refrigirator does.JoeyJoJo123 - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
I'm going to have to agree here. Liquid cooling implies that the coolant remains in a liquid state throughout operation. This coolant is inherently designed to have a low vaporization temperature, so that phase change cooling can happen.samer1970 - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
they need to make it 3 hoses and not only 2 , for faster liquid speeddhotay - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
"In the best-case scenario, the higher is the temperature of the chip cooled down by such a LCS, the faster is the circulation. The theoretical limit of TDP that Raijintek’s prototype can handle is unclear, but different reports point to over 200 W, which is in line with traditional high-end and AIO liquid coolers."Is this saying the chip surface temperature will have to rise to what would normally be an worrying point (with air or liquid cooling) before the cooling effect really starts working? Just how hot would the chip have to be before the system approached 200W of dissipation?
samer1970 - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
it will rise anyways above 50 , and that liquid will evaporate at 50 and start moving so dont worryMurloc - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
50°C is really not that difficult to reachbcronce - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link
50c is nothing. Below 90c if safe for pretty much anything except SSDs. I had a GPU that ran at 103c-108c 8+ hours a day for 6 years before I replaced it with something that didn't sound a like a blow-dryer clogged with dust.CPUs pretty much don't take damage from heat anymore because they're self-regulating. What damages them is too high of voltages. Stability can be affected by heat and even overclocked frequency, but no damage will occur.
Yuriman - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
Hold a sec - Raijintek just reinvented the heatpipe?Murloc - Friday, June 3, 2016 - link
it's in flexible tubing and this allows a way bigger radiator. It may sound trivial but I'm sure the engineering behind isn't.Spunjji - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link
Some people just gotta trivialise an engineering development :/chuttney1 - Monday, June 6, 2016 - link
The underlying cooling method is thermosiphoning.chuttney1 - Monday, June 6, 2016 - link
They are using thermosiphoning as the cooling method.vidal6x6 - Saturday, June 4, 2016 - link
I got here thermalright ultra xtreme 120 with the 4770k 1.240v 4.2ghz (bad chip) with no fan on cooler. iam running three 12cm at 589rpm just for movin the air inside the case. and my temps are so good. I only know if may case is powered because the led. I don`t have a single NOISE!kondor999 - Sunday, June 5, 2016 - link
Sounds like the S5G reactor on SSN-671 (Narwhal).Zotamedu - Sunday, June 5, 2016 - link
The problem with having to mount the radiator above the water block is easily solved by introducing a wick that can move the liquid from the radiator back to the water block with capillary forces. If one someone had thought of that before...Oh right, it turns it into a regular heatpipe, something we've had in computers for over a decade. I am not at all convinced that a thermosiphon is a good solution for computer cooling. Full immersion cooling has some neat applications in high density data centers and stuff like that but this seems needlessly complicated.
cjs150 - Monday, June 6, 2016 - link
As someone who has built both water cooled and air cooled computers my view is that water cooled are quieter if, but only if, you are watercooling both CPU and GPU. Unless you are into extreme o'cing the CPU, a loop which cools the CPU only is not worth it from a noise point of view because you will get virtually the same temperatures off a well designed air cooling system.I am just about to build my next system which will have 4x180 mm slow moving fans (2 in and 2 on the rad blowing out). I expect the system to be virtually silent and I doubt I will every notice the pump. Often the noisiest part of a watercooling system (often deliberately so for a waterfall effect and noise) is the reservoir not the pump