that system was a P3.
If it were a P4, I would not trust 4 pennies arranged like that to cool it. I would have liked to seen a proper cpu mount instead, even if it was just the pipe jammed into a coper 3rd party (or even stock) heatsink.

I don’t understand the reasoning for sealing every part of the case, that just prevents natural air flow (no fans in the case). If it was for noise, he could isolate the harddrive alone, with a big heatsink connected…

Still a great idea. What model cooler is that, and how much do they cost?

#3 Adreed, looks like more fun than anything, as it’s not really practical.

Probally could have just used large passive heat sinks to do the same.

I bet if he remove the chiller, that the pipe would be enough to cool the cpu.

why are people obsessed with using pennies as a source of copper! As stated earlier, most of them are mostly zinc, and the pure copper ones don’t cost $.01 any more…

Also, what he built is by no means a heat pipe, as the term ‘heat pipe’ implies that the cooling is mostly dependent on the ‘working fluid’ in the pipe, which transfers energy by evaporating on the hot side and condensing on the cold side.

I suppose that just with the sheer copper mas can can cool a p3 (putting out like 30w?), but don’t expect to be able to pull a stunt like that with any modern processor.

I will give it to Will, it was ‘odd’

Is that a Mountain Dew mini fridge, from the Dew U contest?

Those peltier junction based coolers are power hungry and create a fair amount of heat themselves.
They themselves probably have better heatsinks and fans then your CPU did originally!

For an interesting project it’s awesome, but there’s no real advantage here, just trading heat for more heat eleswhere and more power consumption for your trouble.

Save the middlemen and just transplant the wine cooler’s heatsink and fan onto your CPU, problem solved! :D
(though admittedly not nearly as fun!)

@ #8
Inside the cooler, since the door is thick, I used grommets on either end, thus making it sturdy. From there on in, it remains open pretty much about a 1/2 inch away from the back of the cooler.

@ #9
Haha, that would be interesting if it were. But no, just an Emerson chiller I found online for 30 bucks.

@ #10
I don’t necessarily call 36 watts (yes, 36, I don’t know why it isn’t 35). That’s about half the wattage of the lowest watt light bulb. And in terms of trading heat, try 2 degrees cooler than the outside case temperature (from 92 to 90). I call that a big advantage. And about transporting the heatsink and fan… no, that just doesn’t make sense. That’s not how it works at all. It circulates a grade of freon around to cool the air inside it. As per heat that it gives off, it feels about 80 to me, I’ll get back to you with the temps that the fans put off, but really, hardly anything to mention.

I have an old shuttle XPC kicking around, and it has a ‘heat pipe’ cooler, kind of along the same lines of this, except its copper pipes are filled with a fluid that evaporates from the processor end, and condenses at the cooling end, running back down to the processor. I dont know what the chemical is, possibly condensed freon, or perhaps just alcohol, however It hasnt always been reliable, and I have nearly fried my processor from it before. To cut a long story short, I really wouldn’t trust the copper pipe alone cooling method..I would at least try filling it half up with a coolant, and seal the other end (oh and make sure the cooling end is raised higher than the processor). I think that the heatsink would be alot more efficient this way…

@ #15

Possible condensation, risk I don’t really want to take, and the wine chiller would be way too small to fit everything.

@ #14
I don’t think that it would be alcohol, it would evaporate wicked fast. I remember hearing something from a friend of mine stating that copper tubing by default sometimes comes with mineral water in it? Not too sure though…
This project is purely experimental during this phase, I will be sure to keep all of you posted about the temperatures (obviously to the best of my ability considering the fact that the mobo does not have a temperature guage).

why not take the guts from the wine chiller and build them into the case of the pc… getting rid of the entire plastic chiller body only keeping the cooling bits!

I know the author didn’t mean this to be an actual heat pipe, but the misuse of heat pipes now is getting ridiculous.

These things work on gravity. The heat source at the bottom heats up a liquid with a low boiling point, the heat makes it rise, when it gets to the cooler top part it condenses and drips back down a braided wick.

If the heat source is higher then the cooling element then the heat pipe effect won’t work. The amount of products that I see made this is astounding and shows a concerning lack of knowledge on the part of buyers who should probably know better. The only way these move heat when not used properly is through conduction, so using solid copper would actually work better.

It hurts every time I see some idiot that had spent $100 on a heat pipe cooler and mounted it upside down or sideways. These people are making computer nerds look as nutty as audiophiles.

# 20 Thats pretty much what I said in #14! Anyway after some research I found out they use a chemical made by 3M, however I looked it up in work, i’m now home and I have forgotten the name of it…D’oh, but as I said the heat source needs to be lower than the cooling end for it to work… however they don’t all use wicks. Some of them just let the liquid run freely inside…i’m contemplating cutting open the copper piping from my XPc heatpipe just to see whats in side..not sure how much a new one would cost though! Perhaps I could just use a standard heatsink..

capillarity, those weird ass heat pipes are filled with sponge like stuff for the liquid to crawl

#20 – I thought the “gravity” and the “wick” heat pipes were two different things?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pipe
“In the case of vertically-oriented heat pipes the fluid may be moved by the force of gravity. In the case of heat pipes containing wicks, the fluid is returned by capillary action.”

Aren’t most large p4 heat sinks now heat pipes? Laptops too? How can either of those be mounted vertically?

….Which brings me back to my original post.. My heatpipe operates using gravity, and it contains ethanol!! (I decided to cut it open just to find out..) Pity i hadn’t seen the wikipedia article first!