PC innovation - Cooling

[Nooblynoob]

Hi all,

I spent some times to enquire on reddit tech and IT channels in vain and hope to find experts here to get a definitive answer to the question:

Considering that temperature decrease when the air density decrease, why can't we use a partial void/vacuum in a PC to chill its components?!

While heat won't be dissipated by air molecules, the general ambient temperature should chill the hardware and prevent it to get warm no?

Please neglect the capacity of the hardware to sustain a partial vacuum and imagine capacitors are super tough

 

Please share your views! 

[Tridefender]

Wdym? Let's take space as example, space is a void, according to you it should be -285 degrees Celsius. Then why space ships and nuclear batteries needs heatsinks?

 

Btw, vacuum actually prevents heat dissipation, that's the purpose of double layer glass windows.

[Tridefender]

Or do you mean copper vacuum heat spreader plates and heat pipes? These uses low air pressure to help evaporation of internal liquid

[PDifolco]

Can't see how vacuum could prevent heat to build up when the components work, stars do heat up (and quite a lot)  for example

Then a totally "airproof" case won't be able to dissipate any heat , and the whole thing will explode/implode and burn

[Dedayog]

2 hours ago, Nooblynoob said:

Hi all,

I spent some times to enquire on reddit tech and IT channels in vain and hope to find experts here to get a definitive answer to the question:

Considering that temperature decrease when the air density decrease, why can't we use a partial void/vacuum in a PC to chill its components?!

While heat won't be dissipated by air molecules, the general ambient temperature should chill the hardware and prevent it to get warm no?

Please neglect the capacity of the hardware to sustain a partial vacuum and imagine capacitors are super tough

 

Please share your views! 

You're applying a concept backward.

 

No because vacuum is an insulator. Like double pane glass windows.

 

You want greater density to take more heat away, actually.

 

 

[Spring1898]

Temperature decreases when pressure is decreased relative to its starting temp, rate of decrease in pressure, and ambient temp, all other factors being constant. This is due to the decrease in gas molecules bumping into each other. So the heat we are measuring is the energy within that volume of air.

 

But with a cpu, we have a heat generating component present that is actively adding heat to the system. We need a way to extract that heat and energy away from its origin.

You can radiate the heat, but very inefficient way to move the heat. 

 

You can conduct it away into another medium like using a heatsink.

 

Or you can convect it away by using a flow of another medium over the hot component, such as air or water.

 

If you suck out the air there is no medium to transfer the heat to. Hence you would be in effect insulating the part as the radiation heat is ineffective at this level (for various reasons). 

 

So air or water as convection

 Take your pick 

[TatamiMatt]

What i assume youre trying to describe is a drop in pressure causing things to cool down, for example, a can of compressed air or deodorant getting cooler as is decompresses and there is a drop in pressure.

 

The issue is doing this multiple times while the system isnt starved of a heat transfer media. The thing is we have already solved this. They repeatedly compress and expand liquid to cool or heat it, know as a heat pump, youll find these in refridgerators or A/C units. So the best bet is probably to put an A/C in your room to help cool your pc

[Spring1898]

15 minutes ago, TatamiMatt said:

So the best bet is probably to put an A/C in your room to help cool your pc

Lol! Best line of the day!

[thrasher_565]

On 11/13/2024 at 4:08 AM, Spring1898 said:

Lol! Best line of the day!

ya thats the best but hot air and cooling can be confusing. you can cool something with hot air just not as good as cool air and well speed would play a factor in that. moving air is better then no moving air even thow its hot...