Legit Reviews: PC Hardware Technology News and Reviews

Intel to introduce watercooling?

Tom's Hardware Guide recently published an article indicating Intel maybe seriously considering watercooling their CPU's. A prototype system built by Sanyo Denki (SAN ACE MC?) was sent to Tom's and the test results vs air-cooling were of course as expected. Watercooling was much more effective then air-cooling. From what could be gleaned reading the Tom's piece, the compact Sanyo Denki system would purportedly come sealed, be very easy to install, and maintainence free. In the evolution of the modern processor, Engineer's are faced with a conundrum. As CPU die-size continue to shrink the number of transistors within actually increases. With this ever increasing number of transistors occupying an ever decreasing amount of silicon real-estate, the heat generated is substantial. The P4 dissipates 115W and this heat must be removed as rapidly as it's generated. Watercooling is ideally suiited for thermal management  as waterblock's do not require the large mass, nor the surface area air-cooler's do. Since it's primarily the water which is removing the heat, the waterblock's footprint need only be as large as the processor it rests upon. Read the full article here.

Posted by | Tue, Nov 23, 2004 - 06:38 AM