Heat Pipe
A heat pipe is a hollow tube containing a heat transfer liquid. The liquid absorbs heat and evaporates at one end of the pipe. The vapor travels to the other (cooler) end of the tube, where it condenses, giving up its latent heat. The liquid returns to the hot end of the tube by gravity or capillary action and repeats the cycle. Heat pipes have a much higher effective thermal conductivity than solid materials. For use in computers, the heat sink on the CPU is attached to a larger radiator heat sink. Both heat sinks are hollow, as is the attachment between them, creating one large heat pipe that transfers heat from the CPU to the radiator, which is then cooled using some conventional method. This method is expensive and usually used when space is tight, as in small form-factor PCs and laptops, or where no fan noise can be tolerated, as in audio production. Because of the efficiency of this method of cooling, many desktop CPUs and GPUs, as well as high end chipsets, use heat pipes in addition to active fan-based cooling to remain within safe operating temperatures.
Read more about this topic: Computer Cooling
Famous quotes containing the words heat and/or pipe:
“Whoever the last true cowboy in America turns out to be, he’s likely to be an Indian.”
—William Least Heat Moon [William Trogdon] (b. 1939)
“When you can pipe that merry old strain,
Robert of Lincoln, come back again.”
—William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)