The (ridiculous) future of silent cooling ?

[ChrisG]

http://www.silentpowerpc.de/

It's in German, but you should be able to figure it out. That "nest" of copper in the top apparently offers a very large surface area for heat dissipation, but I'd think it will also gather dust like a mofo and be a bitch to clean out as well. Copper isn't exactly cheap either, which could make it costly. It does, however, appear to have quite substantial cooling capabilities, completely passively cooling a modern i7 & GTX 760. Specs :

http://www.silentpowerpc.de/spezifikationen/

This is to say nothing of the aesthetics, however.....

 

[Hat Monster]

It would not gather dust as well as a current heatsink does.

It doesn't use forced convection, so there are no areas of turbulence to preferentially concentrate airborne particles.

It's effectively a 3D heat spreader using the entire inside volume for cooling. Painfully obvious in hindsight.

 

[cogwheel]

I doubt it'd work well at all. While the copper foam has good surface area, it also has very little cross sectional area (relatively low thermal conductivity in bulk), so very little energy will make it more than a few mm through the foam. Most of that giant copper scotch-brite pad won't be doing anything for cooling, and I'd bet that most of the reason it works (if it works) is because it has a large thermal mass under the foam, is only using a 35W processor, and both the processor and GPU will throttle once the thermal mass gets saturated.

 

[ChrisG]

Hat Monster[/url]":1ypo3czz]It would not gather dust as well as a current heatsink does.

Don't agree. Once dust gets inside there, it's never coming out again.

 

[Hat Monster]

It has to get in. That's where this design excels, without any forced air how is the dust getting in?

 

[HellDiver]

Hat Monster[/url]":2g730c1y]It has to get in. That's where this design excels, without any forced air how is the dust getting in?

Gravity.

 

[sjbuggs]

Hat Monster[/url]":24dxgtvk]It has to get in. That's where this design excels, without any forced air how is the dust getting in?

It just sits on top of the case like a copper chia pet. The only reason to use the foam is to expect air to pass through it - otherwise just put a thick slab of copper on it (which obviously wouldn't cut it) or make the exterior case a single big heat sink (which could).

As long as there is air passing through it, dust will be deposited. So it'll definitely get a degree of dirt in there. Maybe not enough to make a difference? Who knows...

So while interesting, there are conventional ways to cool stuff with resorting to that. It's only using a 35W tdp CPU. The GPU *could* draw a lot more power, but they conveniently left off the clock rate on it, so I suspect it'll be seriously under-clocked.

I'll give them points for being clever, but without a shipping product, benchmarks, and temperature data it's vaporware and ChrisG hit the nail on the head with the subject.

 

[Devin]

HellDiver[/url]":2r22zbej]

Hat Monster[/url]":2r22zbej]It has to get in. That's where this design excels, without any forced air how is the dust getting in?

Gravity.

No, convection. The whole point of convection is that air moves, and just the fact that the air inside the sink will be warmer thus naturally moving out and having cooler air displace it. Gravity won't force dust inside the foam, it'll just create a layer on top.

ChrisG[/url]":2r22zbej]

Hat Monster[/url]":2r22zbej]It would not gather dust as well as a current heatsink does.

Don't agree. Once dust gets inside there, it's never coming out again.

I bet the cleaning guidance will be to detach it and rinse it out from time to time.

A bonus is that it can be used as a scouring pad for washing stainless steel pots and pans when not in use.

 

[HellDiver]

Now you mention it, it reminds me of the pot scrubber my father and I re-purposed as a replacement pre-cleaner in the air filter of our 1960's Massey Ferguson, because the original wire wool was disintegrating.

 

[SBD]

Back when I was an undergrad, filling out my transcripts with garbage classes so that I could avoid another quantum physics course, I took an electronics packaging class. For a paper, I took a recent journal article about microscopic semiconducting spikes that a small voltage could be applied to and they would create a small amount of local air flow. I proposed depositing an array of seeds on a copper heatsink and using vapor/liquid/solid growth to create a wind-generating nano forest with no moving parts. The concept was predicated on the fact that I thought vapor/liquid/solid growth was pretty cool. And it is.

The paper got a 'C'.

I give the copper Scotch Brite solution a 'D', for what it's worth.

 

[cogwheel]

This made it to the front page, though not in a good way.

 

[mcmnky]

SBD[/url]"dm4kc95]Back when I was an undergrad, filling out my transcripts with garbage classes so that I could avoid another quantum physics course, I took an electronics packaging class. For a paper, I took a recent journal article about microscopic semiconducting spikes that a small voltage could be applied to and they would create a small amount of local air flow. I proposed depositing an array of seeds on a copper heatsink and using vapor/liquid/solid growth to create a wind-generating nano forest with no moving parts. The concept was predicated on the fact that I thought vapor/liquid/solid growth was pretty cool. And it is.

The paper got a 'C'.

I give the copper Scotch Brite solution a 'D', for what it's worth.

Why would you want to avoid another quantum physics course?

 

[sjbuggs]

cogwheel[/url]":3efcqrvp]This made it to the front page, though not in a good way.

But about as well as I'd expect...

 

[tycheung]

Carrot Top!

 

[caustic meatloaf]

mcmnky[/url]":2unsg7it]

SBD[/url]":2unsg7it]Back when I was an undergrad, filling out my transcripts with garbage classes so that I could avoid another quantum physics course, I took an electronics packaging class. For a paper, I took a recent journal article about microscopic semiconducting spikes that a small voltage could be applied to and they would create a small amount of local air flow. I proposed depositing an array of seeds on a copper heatsink and using vapor/liquid/solid growth to create a wind-generating nano forest with no moving parts. The concept was predicated on the fact that I thought vapor/liquid/solid growth was pretty cool. And it is.

The paper got a 'C'.

I give the copper Scotch Brite solution a 'D', for what it's worth.

Why would you want to avoid another quantum physics course?

Quantum mechanics is what convinced me to just stick with the minor in physics, instead of picking up a double major

 

[krimhorn]

caustic meatloaf[/url]":11e2odw1]

mcmnky[/url]":11e2odw1]

SBD[/url]":11e2odw1]Back when I was an undergrad, filling out my transcripts with garbage classes so that I could avoid another quantum physics course, I took an electronics packaging class. For a paper, I took a recent journal article about microscopic semiconducting spikes that a small voltage could be applied to and they would create a small amount of local air flow. I proposed depositing an array of seeds on a copper heatsink and using vapor/liquid/solid growth to create a wind-generating nano forest with no moving parts. The concept was predicated on the fact that I thought vapor/liquid/solid growth was pretty cool. And it is.

The paper got a 'C'.

I give the copper Scotch Brite solution a 'D', for what it's worth.

Why would you want to avoid another quantum physics course?

Quantum mechanics is what convinced me to just stick with the minor in physics, instead of picking up a double major

Don't QM professors grade on a probability scale? While your specific grade might be uncertain you probably did well. We just won't know how well until we measure your grade and at that point we won't have any clue where to find it. See? Win-win.

 

[SBD]

krimhorn[/url]":1u5zeex8]

caustic meatloaf[/url]":1u5zeex8]

mcmnky[/url]":1u5zeex8]

SBD[/url]":1u5zeex8]Back when I was an undergrad, filling out my transcripts with garbage classes so that I could avoid another quantum physics course, I took an electronics packaging class. For a paper, I took a recent journal article about microscopic semiconducting spikes that a small voltage could be applied to and they would create a small amount of local air flow. I proposed depositing an array of seeds on a copper heatsink and using vapor/liquid/solid growth to create a wind-generating nano forest with no moving parts. The concept was predicated on the fact that I thought vapor/liquid/solid growth was pretty cool. And it is.

The paper got a 'C'.

I give the copper Scotch Brite solution a 'D', for what it's worth.

Why would you want to avoid another quantum physics course?

Quantum mechanics is what convinced me to just stick with the minor in physics, instead of picking up a double major

Don't QM professors grade on a probability scale? While your specific grade might be uncertain you probably did well. We just won't know how well until we measure your grade and at that point we won't have any clue where to find it. See? Win-win.

I'm a materials engineer, as my elaborate materials-based solution to the problem at hand probably implied, but not the kind that needs excessive quantum physics and I already had a job lined up at that point. Quantum physics is plenty interesting, but not the point that I need somebody grading my 'interest' in the subject