Cooling Gaming PC with heat pipes only?

Considering a gaming pc, with a GPU and CPU midrange or above (GPU could for example be Radeon 5770), is it possible to cool with only heat pipes(active ones with fluid) with acceptable temperatures on all components during a lengthy gaming session (no overclocking though)? How many heatpipes do you need? (i.e. how many components need heat pipes?, no fans are allowed).

Thanks in advance for constructive answears.

So......you basically want a totally passive cooled mid to high end gamer?
Not possible.

why wouldn't a cooler like they use on these tesla cards work Mr.Scott ?

Problem with passive cooling in a case, is you need a fan or fans somewhere for airflow. OP says "no fans". Passive heat will just build up in the case without airflow. That's just how it works.
Passive PSU's are junk and expensive also.

Are you talking about buying a passive cooler to do this or trying to build one.

caddi daddi said:

why wouldn't a cooler like they use on these tesla cards work Mr.Scott ?

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Not saying it won't. You can passively cool almost anything.........but not contained and without some sort of air motion.

a fishtank build would do it for a while, until the fluid got heat soaked.

Lochekey said:

Are you talking about buying a passive cooler to do this or trying to build one.

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The average joe cannot build his own heatpipe cooler.

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caddi daddi said:

a fishtank build would do it for a while, until the fluid got heat soaked.

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True. Didn't think of submersion.

Mr.Scott said:

Problem with passive cooling in a case, is you need a fan or fans somewhere for airflow. OP says "no fans". Passive heat will just build up in the case without airflow. That's just how it works.
Passive PSU's are junk and expensive also.

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With you until part of that last sentence.

There are several quality passive psus out (they are exlensive!).

As for the OP, I agree with Mr scott... eventually, every system will need some air moved out of the case (even if you go low power cpu and something like a 750ti - though I wouldn't call the gpu midrange.. and neither is a 5770 these days). A heatpipe is good at moving heat from one location to another, but not dissipating it. Part of the reason why heatpipe equipped heatsinks work are the fins attached to it (and the fans).

Prolimatech MK-26, components such as this one, that is heatpipes with fins without a fan (directly on it), even they rely on air movement from a case-fan
to work (deliver acceptable temps at strainous conditions)?

But the fins, aren't they made to dissipate the heat, do they need moving air from a fan for that? Won't there be currents from heated air near the fins moving upward? Or do you mean that the air inside the case will eventually get hotted up from all the fins of the heatpipes, and that will cause the system to not being able to cool anymore?

If the case is more or less open, like a Corsair-something case, with top, side and bottom are open, covered with grid/littice, originally meant to hold fans, only you have removed the fans), combined with the normal air movements in the room, won't that be enough?

But the fins, aren't they made to dissipate the heat, do they need moving air from a fan for that? Won't there be currents from heated air near the fins moving upward? Or do you mean that the air inside the case will eventually get hotted up from all the fins of the heatpipes, and that will cause the system to not being able to cool anymore?

this is correct, the fins pickup and move heat also.

even with no case there would not be enough airflow.

EarthDog said:

With you until part of that last sentence.

There are several quality passive psus out (they are exlensive!).

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I was on a roll.....sorry.
You are absolutely correct though. There are a couple quality passive PSU's out there.
Still ridiculously expensive though.

But the fins, aren't they made to dissipate the heat, do they need moving air from a fan for that? Won't there be currents from heated air near the fins moving upward? Or do you mean that the air inside the case will eventually get hotted up from all the fins of the heatpipes, and that will cause the system to not being able to cool anymore?

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The fins will dissipate heat without a fan...yes.

The primary cooling mechanism for a heat sink with fins is convection. Mr. Scott is right in that airflow will make it more efficient (i.e. remove more heat).

Without airflow, you need more surface area to dissipate the heat (aka more fins).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_management_of_electronic_devices_and_systems

If the fins get hot enough, they will cool via radiative heat dissipation (like things do in space)...but they have to get really hot.

there are several pc cases that are designed for such a task... fanless computing, silent pc's ect.
this would tickle your fancy http://www.quietpc.com/nof-icepipe
there are several gpu's that are fanless
an open air case or a case with lots and lots of ventilation would suffice eg the ones with giant mesh sides
there are fanless psu's

there are even cases that will attach heat pipes directly to the cpu and they attach to the side of the case and the case is a big fanless heatsink.
https://www.endpcnoise.com/fanless-pcs
that site also has alot of pre-built fanless pc's.

The CPU cooler is pretty cool (no pun intended). It's heavy though...big...rated for 95 W TDP...and has LOTS of fins!

JrClocker said:

The CPU cooler is pretty cool (no pun intended). It's heavy though...big...rated for 95 W TDP...and has LOTS of fins!

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there is a reason for all of that... and im not going to get into it.

NoFan CR095 is not bad, but most any top tier cooler will cool as well or better passively .. and they are much lower priced.

As for a totally passive system, I would do it with motherboard rotated 90 degrees with i/o on bottom or top in a housing that is at least 1 meter tall completely open top and bottom. This will give the case a good airflow from bottom to top, like a chimney.

Heat rises no matter what... I wouldn't do it in a ITX case, but, anything with a bit of room will still be fine.

doyll said:

Cooling a case with bottom to top airflow design will passively cool much better than a case with front to back airflow design.

Having a chimney design significantly increases airflow without increasing noise. Which is a fact that always true.

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Even though I agree with this, the temp difference will be negligible. Maybe 2c at best.
Not worth the argument.

I have some semi-relivant first hand experience, maybe it can lend some useful info to this topic.

My current watercooling build boasts an overkill 9x140 mm radiator.



This thing is gigantic, even larger than my case. The fin density is pretty small, at least 2 mm between each fin with several pipes running through them. It's optimized for low speed fan use, but with the spread out fins and large surface area it seemed like it may be viable as a passive heatsink. When i first got the thing installed my first test was to see how it would perform as a passive heatsink for my system, just out of curiosity. Running F@H as my "heat generation test" (cpu at ~20%, gpu at heavy constant load) i kept an eye on the cpu, gpu, and water temp. after 45 minutes the temps were still steadily rising, my tubing was noticeably hot and more flexible, water temp rose to over 100f, and cpu/gpu temps were pretty hot. Not hot enough to start throttling, but hotter than i would want to run my components 24/7 (sorry i don't have exact temps, i did this test several months ago). I then installed a single stock corsair 140mm fan running at 30% through speedfan. The single fan was not audible from more than a foot away, and my temps dropped by over 50%.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that it is possible, but the only reason i can see for doing a passive build is cool-factor. The performance isn't gonna be very good in terms of temps, and it's going to take a massive amount of heat dispersion area if you don't have something pushing any air. Stuff like a chimney design, or convection optimized cases are going to make a minuscule difference in temps. Surface area is king, and if you don't have airflow you need a LOT of it to dissipate a gaming-heatload. The benefit of having just 1 super low speed fan running silently is significant compared to nothing.