Why no liquid cooled laptops?

[sotiris.bos]

I am most definately not a fan of laptops, notebooks, netbooks etc whatever. I like my huge, silent, windowed desktop right next to me with my 24" monitor and gaming peripherals. But my girlfrend uses only her laptop which runs hot and very noisy (probably clogged fans). Why isn't there anyone making a water cooled laptop for the sake of silence and cool legs?

[Volbet]

The did experiment with one: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/asetek-cooling-alienware-notebook,15077.html

The problem was that the pipes would crack because of sudden changes in tempratures.  

[sotiris.bos]

I am sure there is a way around the pipes cracking. I am not only reffering to super high end, overclocked gaming laptops but medium range ones too. I am sure all onboard devices (mid range models) could be adequately cooled with a single thin radiator and quiet fan.

[TheArium]

Laptop are not cheap to begin with, a water cooled laptop would be beastly expensive I fear. It would also be big and heavy. I don't think it's practical with the technology of today. Use can air to blow out the dust and it'll run fine. I took 20 degrees from my own laptops idle temps by doing so.

[horvath93]

Liquid cooling in a laptop would make a laptop heavier and bulkier, which defeats it's purpose : portability.

[Volbet]

I am sure there is a way around the pipes cracking. I am not only reffering to super high end, overclocked gaming laptops but medium range ones too. I am sure all onboard devices (mid range models) could be adequately cooled with a single thin radiator and quiet fan.

The problem in that scenario is that the temprature decides how good the water is as a cooling solution. Hot water is better at cooling than cold water. This means that it would be wasted on low - and mid range laptops. And technically speaking a laptop is liquid cooled already. The heatpipes that leads the heat from the CPU/GPU is filled with a liquid.

 

If the heat and noise from your girlfriends laptop is a problem I would recommend you to change the thermal paste, as it is certainly of bad quality.

[sotiris.bos]

 

I think you could just replace the heat pipes with tubes and the only added weight would be a pump, some tiny water blocks and a small radiator. With so low TDPs on mobile hardware i believe the added weight and thickness would be minimal. Maybe the only reason there is no such thing out there is that the audience laptops reffer to is just fully ignorant to understand the benefits. As for the cost, imagine if HP or some other brand just replaced the conventional cooling and mass produced every of their laptop with water cooling (little cost). I believe it is the future but i wish it  would come today.

[sotiris.bos]

As Linus always says, water cooling is not only for low temperatures, but also silence. Modern hardware are far from optimised and efficient. No one except from Intel and PSU companies are much focused on efficiency and those who do (including the previously mentioned), don't fully and do it only for profit and marketing purposes. I think there is so much headroom for optimisation but everyone is trying to make the most (money) out of every possible technology and we are to blame for not demanding. So I say let's see some real innovations and efficiency from the big guys, not only profit making and bleeding us dry for mediocracy.

[TheArium]

I don't really get the silence part as a water cooled setup requires fans as well. You can get silence fans, of course, but that you can also do in a air cooled build. In a water cooled laptop you would probably still only have a single (or in some cases 2) fan trying to cool the water in the rad. Speaking of radiators, a water cooled laptop would need one of those as well. Wouldn't it?

[sotiris.bos]

I don't really get the silence part as a water cooled setup requires fans as well. You can get silence fans, of course, but that you can also do in a air cooled build. In a water cooled laptop you would probably still only have a single (or in some cases 2) fan trying to cool the water in the rad. Speaking of radiators, a water cooled laptop would need one of those as well. Wouldn't it?

fans in water cooled setups can run much slower and thus quieter. I mentioned that you have to include a rad and you could probably get away with a small thin one where the heatsink for the conventional cooling is placed. Or we could see some more compact and odd radiator setups that are suitable for a laptop. As i mentioned before, there is so much lack of innovation which could be widely used (e.g. i don't think waterproofing motherboards is such an innovation and would be used by many). It's just that manufacturers in the computer industry have lost their passion for pushing the technological threshold and they are being runned as business companies who are after only bigger profit.

[Hyydrah]

The solution isn't to have more effective cooling solutions, but rather to have cooler components that perform well.

[sotiris.bos]

The solution isn't to have more effective cooling solutions, but rather to have cooler components that perform well.

Couldn't agree more but i am also an efficiency freak and want everything perfect. :P

[Hyydrah]

Couldn't agree more but i am also an efficiency freak and want everything perfect. :P

A perfect solution wouldn't be a watercooling solution.  :P

[brownninja97]

It seems to me that their isnt enough space to make something that would last for a long time.

[sotiris.bos]

A perfect solution wouldn't be a watercooling solution.  :P

Peltier then maybe? :P

[sotiris.bos]

It seems to me that their isnt enough space to make something that would last for a long time.

Nothing currently produced is made to last. Golden rule of profit making.

[brownninja97]

Nothing currently produced is made to last. Golden rule of profit making.

By lasting, im talking a year which is in the warranty bracket for a lot of companies so it would hurt profit a lot.

[TheRetiredSlave]

The problem is that dispelling heat is almost entirely based on the surface area of the cooling fins (and the volume of air going through them). Radiators aren't magical; they just have a lot more room for additional surface area for the cooling fins. The coolant pipes in the radiator spread the heat across a much larger surface area that you would find in a regular air heatsink, which allows more cooling efficiency at a lower fan RPM, thus creating less noise..

 

The reason that this hasn't been done in laptops is simple: there isn't enough room in a laptop for a large enough radiator to make an effective difference in the noise levels. Most laptops only have room for a tiny heatsink and one 60mm fan. Whether it uses a copper heatpipe or a coolant tube to pull heat into a heatsink doesn't matter.. The surface area and the amount of airflow going through it would be roughly equal, so the cooling efficiency would also be roughly equal. It's not cost effective to add in pumps, reservoirs, and coolant tubes if one heatpipe can do the same thing.

 

Remember Linus' video in which he compared a Corsair H100, H80, and a high-end air cooler? The air cooler and the H80 performed almost equally..

[sotiris.bos]

The problem is that dispelling heat is almost entirely based on the surface area of the cooling fins (and the volume of air going through them). Radiators aren't magical; they just have a lot more room for additional surface area for the cooling fins. The coolant pipes in the radiator spread the heat across a much larger surface area that you would find in a regular air heatsink, which allows more cooling efficiency at a lower fan RPM, thus creating less noise..

 

The reason that this hasn't been done in laptops is simple: there isn't enough room in a laptop for a large enough radiator to make an effective difference in the noise levels. Most laptops only have room for a tiny heatsink and one 60mm fan. Whether it uses a copper heatpipe or a coolant tube to pull heat into a heatsink doesn't matter.. The surface area and the amount of airflow going through it would be roughly equal, so the cooling efficiency would also be roughly equal. It's not cost effective to add in pumps, reservoirs, and coolant tubes if one heatpipe can do the same thing.

 

Remember Linus' video in which he compared a Corsair H100, H80, and a high-end air cooler? The air cooler and the H80 performed almost equally..

but the air cooler needed a much bigger surface area (i presume)... I think that the coolant pipes in the radiator spread the heat more effectively compared to an air heatsink of the same surface area. The radiator is just capable of more surface area on a denser design. The size of the radiator on an H80 is much smaller compared to the size of a similarly capable air cooler. I don't know which one has the bigger surface area but the h80 is capable of the same cooling but also being much more dense and small than a high end air cooler.

 

I think water cooling is a more efficient solution than air and that a water cooler (excluding the pump) would be much better at cooling than a  similarly sized air cooler.