Filling heatpipes of HSF with water?

J

joeswm8

New Member
what if the heatpipes of heatsinks get filled full of a liquid (water) with holes for vaporization that lead outside of case?

Listen to this theory:

The heat from the CPU goes through AS5 and hits a very thin copper sheet as the base of the heatsink. It then immediately transfers the heat to the water, which has a high specific heat capacity, therefore it must absorb a lot of energy before it heats up (much much more than copper). It takes a long time for the water to heat up, and it evenly distributes the heat throughout its mass. The water would be filled in the base of the HS and along the various heatpipes, which also have very thin walls. The heat is transferred from the water when it gets the little heat that it does, and is transferred to the very thin copper walls of the branching heatpipes. The heat is then dissipated by fans and airflow.

I have basically explained a heatsink, except that air is MUCH less efficient than liquid water. Would this theory work and be applicable? It would cost a significant amount less than water cooling and slightly more than air cooling, while providing better performance. What do you think?
 
I guess you would then have to rig it so it would have a fresh flow of water coming in to replace the lost, evaporated water...... Not to mention, you would then have a very humid room which would could prove to be malicious to any metal components..... Which brings me to believe that they probably don't use straight water (or air for that matter) as it would quickly oxidate the copper/metal rapidly.......
 
Unless you are running one hot cpu it would have to reach 212 degrees fahrenheit or higher to have it evaporate....

The water cooling units put pressure onto the fluid causing it boil at a lower temperature and therefore removing heat with the evaporate and than recycling it....

The majority of water cooling units use water because it does not require a license to do it, as with HVAC type wok requires licensing in order to fill cooling units. That is why the water needs to be replaces be cause some leaks our, a small amount of what is evaporating. While refrigerant which is used does not evaporate, such as r-134a and 114a. These, however, require licenses to purchase.
 
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this isnt phase change guys!!

i am talking about the simple spreading of heat out over a larger area through the XP+ fluid. would this work?
 
joeswm8 said:
what if the heatpipes of heatsinks get filled full of a liquid (water) with holes for vaporization that lead outside of case?
Click to expand...

Sorry for any mis-communication but they way you described, it sounded like you wanted the water to directly evaporate outside the heatpipes and case......
 
To remove heat, moisture needs to evaporate.

It does not have to reach boiling, because if under pressure you can get water to boil at 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Granted enough pressure is applied.

Evaporation is the process whereby atoms or molecules in a liquid state gain sufficient energy to enter the gaseous state (the equivalent process in solids is known as sublimation). It is the opposite process of condensation. Evaporation is exclusively a surface phenomena and should not be confused with boiling. Most notably, for a liquid to boil, its vapor pressure must equal the ambient pressure, whereas for evaporation to occur, this is not the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporation

Boiling and evaporation have nothing to do with each other.
 
joeswm8 said:
what if the heatpipes of heatsinks get filled full of a liquid (water) with holes for vaporization that lead outside of case?

Listen to this theory:

The heat from the CPU goes through AS5 and hits a very thin copper sheet as the base of the heatsink. It then immediately transfers the heat to the water, which has a high specific heat capacity, therefore it must absorb a lot of energy before it heats up (much much more than copper). It takes a long time for the water to heat up, and it evenly distributes the heat throughout its mass. The water would be filled in the base of the HS and along the various heatpipes, which also have very thin walls. The heat is transferred from the water when it gets the little heat that it does, and is transferred to the very thin copper walls of the branching heatpipes. The heat is then dissipated by fans and airflow.

I have basically explained a heatsink, except that air is MUCH less efficient than liquid water. Would this theory work and be applicable? It would cost a significant amount less than water cooling and slightly more than air cooling, while providing better performance. What do you think?
Click to expand...

I think it would take too long for it to remove the heat from the cpu and the cpu would crash before it cooled. standing water doesn't cool very well. What you just explained is like a thermostat going bad in a car. water doesn't move so the engine doesn't cool, but the engine doesn't have an auto shutdown like most cpus, when teh engine gets to a certain temp, it releases its steam. Radiator, warped head, cracked engine block, just name your catastrophe.

Your theory is good but you have to remember that these components heat rapidly thus needing rapid transfer of heat. what I would do is take a block that sits on top of the cpu filled with a fluid with a medium range heat absorbsion rate, have piping coming out of two sides of the block with a high speed fan blowing on them and returning back to the other two sides of the block a.k.a a radiator:D
 
You're mixing up (or misunderstanding) heat capacity and heat conduction. In a transient (as in non-equilibrium) case a high heat capacity material like water would be beneficial, being able to absorb a large amount of energy. However, to spread the heat as is needed in the steady state conditions in a computer, a high thermal conductivity is needed whereas water has a very low thermal conductivity. Heat pipes are well thought out, so it would be hard to improve on them (no offense); in theory they can outperform water cooling do to less components for the heat to travel through.
 
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