I'm not sure if this post belongs to Watercooling or to CPU cooling. Admins, please feel free to move it accordingly.

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine sent me this link: http://uk.theinquirer.net/?article=38333. I researched a bit and came here for reference (as usual!). No news on this thing at SPCR??? Two weeks later, I still can't find any mention of it around here.

Are these coolers any good? Has anyone tested them?

Would be nice having Mike or Ralf reviewing them...

Isn't this just a heatpipe, but with a refrigerant instead of water, ethanol, or mercury as the carrier?

Actually, now that I think about it, don't some heatpipes use refrigerants as the thermocarrier?

I think this has been discussed on SPCR, maybe under CPU cooling? But yes, it is very similar to a heatpipe, except the phase change is supposed to produce bubbles that circulate through the system, causing fluid to flow. In a heatpipe, the working fluid simply condenses at the "cold" end, carrying heat with it. It seems like this is like a heatpipe with too much working fluid in it.

according to the website this acually uses the boiling of the refigerant to force liquid through the radiator as well, so in effect it is a hybrid between a true watercooling solution and a glorified heatpipe, utaliseing the evaporation /condensation method of the heatpipe but also benefiting from the direct transfer of heat from the liquid coolant passing through the radiator - very clever

The question is, when it does run out of refrigerant, as systems like this always do in the end, can I buy a can of 134a at the local auto store and recharge?

If the unit is properly sealed, surely the loss of refrigerant will be minimal.after all we don't have to recharge heatpipes.

Of course my comment was in jest, but it might not be funny to someone who's owned a mid-90s GM car and couldn't afford to have it done at a shop and tried to do it themselves.

And, no, it wasn't me.

Looking at the photos, I seem to remember a link to a review was already posted on these forums. The manufacturer was a belgian brand IIRC.

yeah, someone on theinquirer emailed about my questioning of it.

it is like a heatpipe in that it has liquid that moves upwards, but completely not like it in the sense that it flows in a circle. It is MUCH more efficient as it doesnt get stuck in some equilibrium limbo at higher temps. This could be a wonderful alternative for what we have now for passive cooling.

Do you guys know of any review and where to buy these things in Europe? I've emailed the manufacturer but no reply yet.

AKA a ThermoSyphon...

Its looks just like a Heat Pipe but using refrigerant instead of water. I could be wrong. You can see one pipe is larger than the other. I would imagine the smaller is to return the coolant back to the CPU.

What happens is it uses Latent Heat ( the amount of energy in the form of heat released or absorbed by a substance during a change of phase ).

The refrigerant heats up to boiling point and then vapourises ( change of phase ) and rises into the radiator and condenses losing the latent heat and the is force back down into the cpu area.

What makes this better than water heat pipes:
Absorbs more energy (heat) when transforming into a vapour
Non Crossive
Relatively high density in gaseous form

Since boiling point and gas density are affected by pressure, refrigerants may be made more suitable for a particular application by choice of operating pressure.



Although this is only a guess

I had a quick look at their booth at Computex yesterday. They have a couple of different products for different applications, including a "silent" HTPC version and a more powerful version for the high end users. The latter has some complex ducting to take air from the case onto the heatsink fin area as well as channel some over the VRM and RAM area.

I would love to see these reviewed by SilentPCReview