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Unread 03-02-2005, 02:53 AM   #2
Long Haired Git
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Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Sydney, Oz
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Given the tech available for download of specs, the Delta-T at the evaporator and condensors are too high to beat a good watercooling solution.
Heat pipes are awesome because they are maintenance free, no working parts, no power input heat pumps. They, like watercooling, can take heat from a tiny source and spread it over a large heat sink.
Air cooling does this, predominately, using the thermal conductivity of a material - typically aluminium. It suffers very little interfacing losses - basically one at the TIM and one to air, but suffers a high Delta-T due to the resistance of even good conductors like copper.
Water cooling does this, predominately, using a high-thermal-capacity fluid with mechanical transportation. It gains due to the low Delta-T at the water block and fluid transport, but loses due to mechanical nature and extra interfaces between water and waterblock and water and radiator.
Heat pipes have the same interfaces, but don't have any mechanical aides (jet impingement etc) at the waterblock side.

So, in short, for the application you describe, you're better off using a coolant.

Next, finding a working fluid for what you describe is hard. It has to boil at the temp you want to keep the "block" (evaporator) at, and condense at the cold end temp, and there needs to be a decent Delta-T between the two to generate the energy to get the liquid/gas to move in velocities and volumes to provide the transportation of the energy at the same rate as it arrives from the CPU (and environment, as you'll be sub delta).

Also, bear in mind that outside the working temp of the fluid, a heatpipe stops pumping heat. They fail not through mechanical breakdown, but in that the conditions exceed their parameters...
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Long Haired Git
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