First look, cooling with a flexible PhasePlane^TM Heatpipe from ThermoTek, Inc. USA

Thanks /final word / Award:

Our Thank goes to ThermoTek USA and to Innovatekfor the support of the test samples. A special Thank goes to William F. Leggett (Sr. Thermal Engineer) for the outstanding technical and professional support and to all of our readers and their good ideas.

Thanks to you all.

The award goes to the very good innovative product of a flexible heat pipe from ThermoTek USA, with that we hopefully can realize many nice projects in the future.
 

Forward:

The PhasePlane^TM is a flexible heat pipe which has the potential to change the PC market drastically.  We have been using heat pipes for several years to build quiet cooling solutions for PCs , which we showed at CeBit in Germany and in on television.  For a moment, I will briefly explain what we are talking about in this article and what some of the possibilities are with the PhasePlane^TM heat pipe.
We first introduced these special heat pipes from ThermoTek on October 7, 2004 on our German page. Only five days later we already had a test system running, but the initial results weren’t what I expected.
Due my work on other reviews on the German page, this project moved a little bit into the background for two weeks.  After some initial heat sink modifications that will be described below, we now have a 100% passively cooled and stable test system running an AMD 3700+, although the system is very simple and not yet optimized.

What we have done:

First, we used the copper heat spreader from a NCU-1000 HeatlaneZen cooler by TS Heatronics and cut it into two halves.  Sandwiched between the two copper plates with some thermal compound, we mounted two of the PhasePlane^TM heat pipes side by side and secured them in place with two screws.

We were able to bend the heat pipes just after the copper plates to go up the back of the PC case.  The advantage of these heat pipes was that they were easily bendable by hand without the risk of damaging the internal structure.  We then mounted two large aluminum heat sink coolers on each face of the longer side of the heat pipes which we again fixed with two screws each.

So far, so easy. We then used a CPU holder and thermal compound from Innovatek for mounting the whole apparatus onto the CPU socket.

Test Results:

The idle temperature initially settled at 44°C with at an ambient room temperature of 20°C.

We then began t stress the processor using 10x SiSoft Sandra Burn-In and obtained a stable maximum temperature of 68°C, which we read on the MSI Corecell Hardware Monitor.

After finishing the burn in test and stopping the Burn-In software, the CPU temperature rapidly went back down to idle temperature.

Final conclusion:

By using these PhasePlane^TM heat pipes it was easy to come up with a CPU and GPU cooling solution.  The primary advantage was the easy handling of these versatile, flexible heat pipes which are bendable in every direction.

Of course this little test can definitely be optimized a many ways.  A simple design to implement these heat pipes can affect the temperatures in a good way, even though they have already been shown to be very good for this passive run at an AMD64 3700+.  With an integrated design of the thermal contact surfaces the cooling power of these heat pipes and large heat sinks might even be good enough for a 4500+ or more.

Technical possibilities:

The possibilities for the PhasePlane^TM heat pipes a nearly without limits. For example, two initial ideas.

A Cheap Kit:
By mounting an aluminum heat sink on top of any PC, you could run two pipes from the heat sink down into the case and directly to the CPU or GPU. Not even the power supply is in the way because the pipes can be simply bent around it.  They only have to be made long enough, which ThermoTek assures can be made as long as desired with virtually no performance loss.  If you add 2 PhasePlanes (OEM Price approx EUR 20,00), an additional EUR 20 for the Innovatek CPU Holder, and EUR 10 for the Aluminum heat sink, it is possible to create a completely passive kit for only 50-100 Euros.

A ready case:
It would be best to have a case where the PhasePlane^TM heat pipes are already mounted and, because they bend so easily, could then be bent up individually to fit nearly any mainboard. This could be a much more flexible and cheaper solution then comparable heat pipe cases. Perhaps we could find a manufacturer which would be interested in creating such a solution with us.

Next steps:

I need some longer PhasePlane^TM heat pipes for a nice PC to show at CeBit Germany. ThermoTek has already confirmed that they will ship 3 additional, longer heat pipes that the first ones they sent. As soon as I get them, I plan to test the PhasePlanes on my CPU once more and try optimizing the design further.   Let us see how the feedback in our forum is.

I would like to build a 100% fanless PC for the next Cebit in Hannover with 4500Mhz CPU and 2 Graphic card in SLI Mode cooled only with the PhasePlanes and aluminum heat sinks. Your Ideas and suggestions are welcome.
 

hundertprozentig:

unabhängig
unentgeltlich
sachlich
neutral
werbefrei
sponsorfrei
shopfrei

von führenden
Fachzeitungen und Top WWW Seiten empfohlen