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Introduction:::...
Anyone
who owns a P4 Prescott CPU is, like me, probably of the
opinion that air cooling of any kind is on its way out unless
we see the emergence of some new core-cooling technology.
PC
cooling has gone through several phases, from the time when
people wanted high airflow at any cost and were happy to
tolerate the noise to get it, to today when it seems the
only good PC is a quiet PC.
The
difficulty in building a quiet PC is that you either have
to go the way of liquid cooling it, or use low power parts
that generate less heat. There are niche technologies like
phase change but these tend to be overkill for most systems,
and expensive overkill at that. They're not always particularly
quiet either!
The
cooler I'm looking it comes from high-profile newcomers
SilverStone, and claims to offer the benefits of heatpipe
powered passive cooling when CPU output and case airflow
allows it, and top-notch fan powered active cooling when
it doesn't.
It
looks unique in its design and comes with three relatively
huge 8mm heatpipes to ship heat away from what is a fairly
insignificant base to the much more substantial fin matrix,
positioned to take full advantage of either your PSU or
case fan depending on socket orientation.
Before
we take a closer look here's the specs.
| Material |
Copper
base, fins, and heat pipes
|
| Heat
Pipe Type |
Powder |
| Color |
Copper |
| Motherboard |
ATX,
Micro ATX |
| Application |
Pentium
4 Socket 478 |
| Cooling
System |
2
x 60mm (optional with included shroud) |
| Net
Weight |
587.67 g
|
| Dimension |
130 mm
(W) x 108 mm (H) x 95 mm (D) |
No
doubt you've noticed that several coolers offer heatpipe
cooling of late, but not all heatpipes are created equal.
Not only are these large, they are also of the more expensive
sintered powder variety.
Heatpipes:::...
There
are several types of wick structures used in heat pipes,
there are are grooves, felt, screens and sintered powder.
Sintered powder metal wicks are the more costly as a rule
and offer several advantages over other wick structure including
that a sintered powder wick can work in any orientation,
even against gravity.
A
liquid, usually come kind of water and alcohol mix, is sealed
inside a copper tube. Heat applied to one end evaporates
the liquid and the vapor then moves to the cooler end of
the tube, cooling as it does. At the cooler end of the tube,
usually assisted by fins and/or airflow, the tube is cooled
and the vapor condenses back to a liquid, giving up its
heat to the tube walls then on to the fins or what ever
else has been used to conduct the heat away and dissipate
it to the air. The liquid then soaks into the wick structure
and is drawn back to the hot end by capillary action, where
the whole process starts over.
The sintered powder lining is actually a porous
metal lining and is more expensive to manufacture than cheaper
felt wick or groove structures.
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