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Originally Posted by Ls7corvete
why is vacuum harder to hold than pressure?
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There isn't much difference really. An o-ring (for example) seperates two areas with different pressures, regardless of the actual pressures. It's the difference in pressure that determines how good a seal has to be.
There are no specifications listed in the article, but a complete vacuum is 14.7 psi. A water cooled loop has to deal with, worst case, 5 psi.
The big difference is that one can afford to loose a bit of pressure in water cooling (i.e. a negative pressure leak that injects air in the loop, or coolant evaporation through the tubing), but here one cannot afford to loose any of the vacuum: if the vacuum fails, what you have left is a really bad cooling solution. The cooling unit is then (essentially) unserviceable, aka junk.
AC systems use solid tubing, because they have to hold upwards of 300 psi, but they still break down and leak, on occasion. They're generally considered "high-maintenance" solutions, requiring yearly pressure checks.
All in all, it's the connection failures that's preventing water cooling from going mainstream (that, and cost). In the electronic cooling industry, Stainless Steel tubing is often perceived as being needed. :shrug:
Heat pipes are a bit better, as Cathar already pointed out; their construction is simple, and they remain as a fixed part of a larger assembly (i.e. no mechanical stress to bend and break it).
IBM recently annouces a rackmount cooling solution, but all it is, is a large radiator running chilled water, to cool the exhaust from the rack (to keep the data center temperature cool). IBM's ultimate plan is to incorporate the same setup within each unit placed within a rack, but it'll still be a "radiator after the exhaust" kind of solution; there are no plans to run water within a computer. (it sounds suspiciously like a plumbing exercise to me!)
BTW, did ya'll know that water cooling has been around since the sixties? (yes, 60's!).