Bouncing water to cool cpu

[TheNeonWhiteOne]

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/4/4/15175588/water-droplets-cooling-computers-duke-intel

 

"Scientists from Duke University and Intel have come up with a new mechanism for keeping high-performance electronics cool: fill their insides with bouncing water droplets. It sounds like a late April Fool’s joke, but the researchers say such a system could keep high-performance electronics running at full speed by organically targeting hot-spots."

 

I doubt this would be much better than current water coolers and would be more expensive but it is still cool. I also thought of Jon when I saw it was from duke. 

[flibberdipper]

soooooooooooooo it's a fancy vapor chamber?

[mynameisjuan]

I still dont understand why the water condenses on the hot spots and not the cold spots? 

 

Also how much will this cool the device and wont it not work if its upside down? There seems like a period that is too long where there is nothing transferring heat as the droplet jumps up.

[alamox]

that sounds like a vapor chamber, targeting specific spot, i think you need a significant surface volume for it to be relevant, so i doubt this will ever come to cpu/gpu cooling.

[DocSwag]

57 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

I still dont understand why the water condenses on the hot spots and not the cold spots? 

 

Also how much will this cool the device and wont it not work if its upside down? There seems like a period that is too long where there is nothing transferring heat as the droplet jumps up.

If anything it would condense on the cold spots lol

[Sakkura]

It's poorly described in the article. The water condenses on the side of the vapor chamber away from the heat source, where it then bounces away because of the superhydrophobic coating. The opposite side has a superhydrophilic (water-loving) coating and a wick structure like in regular vapor chambers and heatpipes. The water evaporates there to carry away the heat from the heat source.

 

The idea is, more water will evaporate from hotspots. It will tend to condense on the closest area of the opposite side, and thus once the condensing liquid is bouncing back, it will be more likely to hit a hotspot.

 

The bouncing should also make it work well regardless of cooler orientation.

[Carclis]

Wouldn't the simple solution of just a solid copper block be more effective than this since this seems more focused on moving heat across a super short distance?

[Doobeedoo]

Interesting.

Though to add, vapor chamber should be in more products really.

[Sakkura]

1 hour ago, huilun02 said:

...until you realize this concept is not a complete cooling solution in itself. It will transfer heat about 1cm off the source surface, to another surface of the same size, and then what? The heat magically disappears?

 

A real cooling solution needs to disperse heat out to as large a surface area as possible. Something our air coolers already do very well. And they do so by having the coolant vapor travel some distance through a heatpipe.

 

Do not forget the final stage of heat dispersion.

Vapor chambers are already a thing, and work very well. No, it's not a full cooler in itself, but it isn't meant to be.

1 hour ago, Carclis said:

Wouldn't the simple solution of just a solid copper block be more effective than this since this seems more focused on moving heat across a super short distance?

No, solid metal is way worse at transporting heat than evaporative cooling. That's why air coolers generally rely on heatpipes or vapor chambers. This is a further development of the vapor chamber.

[tlink]

30 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Vapor chambers are already a thing, and work very well. No, it's not a full cooler in itself, but it isn't meant to be.

No, solid metal is way worse at transporting heat than evaporative cooling. That's why air coolers generally rely on heatpipes or vapor chambers. This is a further development of the vapor chamber.

what would we do with the transferred distance? apply it to other heatpipes that go up and attach to the fins?