Surfing around today I came across a few interesting looking heatsinks, and I can't help but ponder whether we could use this technology somehow with water-cooling. If we had a similar base as used in the heatsinks shown in the linked page, but a piece of tubing over the heat-pipes (leave about 1/4" gap around the heatpipe) and flowed water down over the heat-pipes, collected it around the base of the block (have all the outter-tubes end a bit short connected to a collector base around the block itself) and then send that water back to the rad/pump.
Maybe this isn't the best way to water-cool the heatpipes. But it seems as though most of the discussion around here currently centers on the most effective way to get heat from core to water as fast as possible. If this moves heat away from the core to a large heat exchanger faster for air-cooling, could we not use the technology somehow but use water to keep the hot side of the heat-pipes even cooler. It wouldn't be much below, but if the hot end of the heat-pipe was cooled to very near ambient, could the block on the core (doubtful the core itself) go sub-ambient? I'm thinking/hoping that with a well designed water-cooled heat-pipe system that we may start getting core temps within 5C of ambient under load.
And..., before I forget..., the link.
http://www.frostytech.com/articlevie...articleID=1193