Purdue researchers want tiny refrigerators cooling your PC
By Darren Murph 
posted July 24th 2008 7:02PM
posted July 24th 2008 7:02PM
[Via TheFutureOfThings, thanks Iddo]
posted July 24th 2008 7:02PM
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That's a techie Indian guy, not a homeless Indian guy.
As long as they keep the avocado green away, I'll bite.
As long as they stay the hell away from my computer, I'm fine with it.
/sarcasm
oh my god. it's david blaine. i can't believe it.
I see him use one every day, I assure he has figured out how to put it to much better use than you have.
omg i had the guy in the blue for thermo last year!! go purdue BOILER UP!
Sure many of you are clearly failing to grasp this concept while others are clearly seeking an understanding. The irony is that this very technology may likely benefit those who are so quick to dismiss it now. As for those who seek to understand it more....
Yes refrigerators do put off heat from the back however by choosing the correct refrigerant the efficiency can be greatly improved (and in modern units this is highly optimized). When converting energy (read heat) from one form to another there is a loss associated with it, this is known as a enthalpy of transformation. To optimize the refrigeration process a maximal enthalpy of transformation is obtained for the liquid to gas phase transition while a minimal enthalpy of transformation is obtained for the gas to liquid phase. This allows the system to pump heat effectively by helping it expel more energy than is input into the system.
As for the rest of it there will be no condensation as this will not cool your chips below room temperature, its not designed to do that at all. It is to be built as a hermetically sealed part of the chips packaging so you'll never have to worry about unless you get careless and crack the CPU's die (in which case you're SOL anyways).
Its pretty cool to see such a story on Engadget as this work is being done down the hall from me and I've seen progress being made on this a while now. My personal work is coming along quite well and who knows, might be featured here someday as well. ;-)
i see this guy work all the time. i'm sure he is more than capable. it's rare to see any student at purdue without a computer.
i see electric bills soaring!
That's freaking stupid.......
Please think about about improving the efficiency of the chips rather than thinking how to cool it by a device......
Even it could make the laptop smaller, but I worry it will make it heavier and more expensive.
and a compressor surely consumer more electricity than a cooling fan......
Aren't we supposed to reduce greenhouse gas nowadays?
Think about it, save some electricity and it is good for your wallets, too.
making parts better sometimes has the drawback of making things hotter. I for one am up for them keeping systems cooler then improving the parts and repeating that cycle.
"making parts better sometimes has the drawback of making things hotter. I for one am up for them keeping systems cooler then improving the parts and repeating that cycle."
For processors, that only happens when you drive them past certain design criteria. The core2duo chip, for instance, is many times faster and many times cooler running than Cyrix processors 10 years ago. Intel and AMD are moving towards increasing numbers of cores instead of number of megahertz. Once OS's evolve to take advantage of this (snow leopard is an example) we should see huge gains without having to greatly increase heat output.
isnt this just peltier (tec) cooling !?
how is that not being racist? you based your assumptions about him on the way he looks
Why would you use moving parts, when solid state cooling devices exist?
ie: Peltier Devices.
phase cooling for PCs has been around for several years. Most hardcore enthusiasts use it to cool their PCs down to -30-0 celcius. Its rather easy to do and if you have a giant full tower case you can fit it inside the thing.
Also, dells black ice technology is a hybrid version of liquid and phase cooling.
This does not create condensation because there is a tube that leads directly to the CPU and it is sealed so no water can get out. If you do a bad sealing job then condensation can happen.
I hope this comes ot market, I just may skip attempting TEC cooling and get this.
They already sell miniature cooling units and they're named Peltiers or Thermoelectric Coolers. I understand that the guys at Purdue might be trying this from a different approach, but a separate company is working on something similar right here http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080110-startup-shrinks-the-peltier-cooler-and-puts-it-inside-the-chip-package.html .
This shows promise, but there are a lot of companies who have been attempting to do this exact same thing and follow in the footstep of the liquid cooling enthusiasts.