Overclockers

SUMMARY: Thermosyphons – a credible CPU cooling option.

About two years ago, I started to think about watercooling and how a system could be better designed for simplicity, low cost and high performance. I had some ideas on how to accomplish these objectives and started to experiment with prototypes. After a number of prototypes, I arrived at a point where I had to devote a LOT more time to this effort.

I decided that to carry this work further, I had to work with someone who would devote substantial time and energy to this project. I spoke with a number of contacts in the industry and quickly found that there was very little interest in researching a new system. Fortunately, I did find one sympathetic soul, Andy Lemont of Millenium Thermal, who while skeptical at first, saw some merit in what I was trying to do and agreed to collaborate with me.

I have to say we went down many roads and blind alleys, trying alternative materials, fluids and system configurations. Along the way as experimental results grew increasingly more promising, we decided to form a company, Innovation Cooling LLC, to formalize our collaboration, file patents and explore commercialization options.

In our quest for simplicity and low cost, we decided that eliminating the pump was a key objective.

Enter the Thermosyphon. What attracted us to thermosyphons is the utter simplicity of it all – a closed system with no pump requiring no maintenance. In addition, the working fluid can be non-conductive and non-toxic, desirable characteristics for any liquid cooling electronics.

A thermosyphon is a phase change system (for a detailed discussion, go HERE) – it cools by changing the liquid in the system into a gas. This is visually seen as boiling – you can see bubbles forming in the boiler (same as a waterblock in waterccoling systems) as the working fluid vaporizes. There is a wide range of materials to enhance boiling – carbon foam looks very interesting (a movie clip HERE).

The following pic shows bubble formation (if you’re interested, you can DOWNLOAD a 5 MB movie) as seen in the red area:

The vapor rises in the system to the condenser (radiator). Air blown through the fins condenses the vapor to liquid, which then flows down through the tubes to the boiler to repeat the cycle. No pump is required – the vaporization and condensation cycle is self sustaining.

The system is under vacuum and totally sealed – similar to a heatpipe, if you were to forcibly open the system, it would be rendered worthless. Once the vacuum is breached, the boiling ceases.

After many twists and turns, the picture above is the working prototype.

We are now at the point where we feel that we have a system which warrants commercialization. Let me say at this point that the test data you will see is ours; in addition, there will be independent tests published by a very large technology company which has assisted us in this effort which substantiate the results we show here. Prior to any product launch, systems will be available for evaluation by competent, independent third paties.

The Thermosyphon shown above (spec’d for 200+ watts) was tested on an Acorp 4S845A motherboard with a modified P4 1500 to read CPU case temps. For testing, I used 2 NMB 92 mm fans (#3610K4-04W-B50 vented) – I varied rpms to give a noise and performance range.