Future heat sinks for high heat laptops
Interesting article about a water cooled laptop heat radiator that can dissipate 80 watts. Pretty neat. I like how it connects to an aluminium radiator. Who do we know who makes laptops out of aluminium?
In addition to being quieter than fans, it also seems to only require 5V. I wonder how much it adds in terms of weight. Still though, pretty cool (put intended).
Talk amongst yourselves
In addition to being quieter than fans, it also seems to only require 5V. I wonder how much it adds in terms of weight. Still though, pretty cool (put intended).
Talk amongst yourselves
Comments
If your laptop requires 80W the battery won't last but about 20 minutes. Not only that, but the pump for the liquid coolant takes more power and shortens your battery life even more.
This is a technological bandaid for a problem which should be fixed at the source. There are whole books written about this but the better way to design something is the simpler way.
Any such cooling mechanism like this for a laptop is, in the end, air cooling. Heat is generated in the CPU (and accessories) and is eventually dispersed into the air. Along the way it can pass through a heat sink, a heat pipe, a Peltier cooler or a pumped-liquid solution.
The best way to handle this is to use a lower power CPU. The reason is that we don't have power sources for laptops that generate that much power. A laptop battery at best holds about 50 Watt-hours of power. To get five hours use you want a laptop with an average power draw of about 10 Watts. 10 Watts of power in something the size of a laptop can be transferred to air with passive heat sinks.
I'm not knocking the developments by Hitachi and NEC. I think these are amazing developments. Also, I have no experience with these but I'd be curious about how long they last.
I work with some cryo-coolers so am somewhat familiar with these problems. We see lots of coolers that work fine for a day or so. Keeping them running day in and day out for years is another matter.
Slightly off topic. One of my favorite coolers is Anti-Stokes cooling. In this a powerful laser is shined on a special crystal. Instead of evaporating the crystal becomes cold! Kind of an alien technology. The idea is that a photon enters the crystal and is absorbed by an electron. The electron is pumped to a higher level. The electron gains a little more energy from the lattice (heat) then drops to the original or a lower level, emitting a photon in the process. This photon then exits the crystal carrying away the original energy and some heat from the lattice. The last I heard someone had actually gotten this to work slightly. There are claims that if they get the right crystal this will be a very efficient way to cool things. Nice point is no moving parts (except the photons and electrons).
I think a similar kind of technology might be nice for laptops. If we had a passive way (like a heat pipe) to move heat from the base of the laptop to the back of the display that would be a good thing.
Originally posted by neutrino23
If your laptop requires 80W the battery won't last but about 20 minute
I thought I just read somewhere that the PowerBook generates 72W of heat (technically not correct, since Watt is a measure of energy per unit time, or power, and heat is energy).
Note that this isn't how much power a laptop needs, but how much power it has to dissipate.
Erm... if you can have 72W of electricity (which is one form of energy) then why not 72Wof heat? Electric heaters, which like laptops are devices that turn electricity into heat are rated in watts.
"Note that this isn't how much power a laptop needs, but how much power it has to dissipate."
If that were true then it would logically mean that the powerbook must be using MORE than 72 watts of electricity, since laptops produce light and sound as well as heat. Where do you suppose all this heat comes from if not from the powerbook battery? I'm sure the tech industry would jump on a heating device that produced more energy than you put in, just think of the implications for heating your house.
Socrates
If I had more Photoshop ability I'd post a 17" AlBook with a pair of standard electrical sockets.
Screed
Originally posted by Socrates
Erm... if you can have 72W of electricity (which is one form of energy) then why not 72Wof heat? Electric heaters, which like laptops are devices that turn electricity into heat are rated in watts.
That's the electricity they consume, not the heat they produce.
Rate of energy usage or production is measured in Watts. A Watt is a Joule per second. Heat is not measured in Watts, nor is electricty. Heat production is however rated in Watts, as is electricity production/usage.
An electric heater consumes electricty at a certain rate. This can be measured in Watts. This energy is converted to heat and pumped out at a given rate. This rate of heat production is also measured in Watts. For an elecric heater, assuming it makes no sound or light the Wattage in = the Wattage out. The wattage rating for a heater therefore refers to both the input and output of energy, since energy is neither created nor destroyed.
The same thing applies to a laptop. In fact there is no machine in existence which does not consume energy at the exact same rate that it dissapates it.
Socrates.