"The Heat Pipes are coming"... The Heat Pipes are


What is a Heat Pipe? and why you should care. A Heat Pipe( hp from hear on out)is a heat transfer mechanism that combines the principles of both thermal conductivity and phase transition to efficiently manage the transfer heat between two solid interfaces. And why should you in Audio-land care. In short the Heat Pipes (hp) transfers heat from audio equipment and audio listening rooms to make them both sound better. That's a bold statement for sure. But before you boil over and get ready to blast my post, remember there is Heat Pipe (hp) in the very computer or Laptop you are on right now. It's keeping everything in your computer cool inside so it can work as efficiently as possible. A hp contains no mechanical moving parts, and typically require no maintenance. The hp's are PASSIVE devices that are place on top of equipment and placed in your listening room. In short my dedicated listening room with sound reinforcement, diffusers, dedicated lines, and all kinds of isolation devices for my equipment. I Have never addressed the heat coming from my equipment. Since I have all solid state gear, I never thought it was necessary. But when I started putting the hp's on top of my amps near the transformer. There was a noticeable improvement. Then I did the same with my preamp near the power supply the same improvement. Then I put one on all 4 of my players, SACD,DVD-AUDIO,CD, CD 5-DISC players I was sold. The cherry on top was when I put the extra hp's around my listening room. IMPORTANT: I did not have to remove one piece of sound reinforcement when I introduce the hp's in the environment. They just make what's there work better. They look like Aluminum heat sinks with two copper tube coming out of them. I do have one that has 4 copper tubes in it, and looks to be all copper heat sinks included. I even have some that do not have any copper tubes at all , just all aluminium. The ones with the copper tube are better than the all aluminum ones everywhere I compared them at, which was everywhere. So let that Heat Pipe (hp) in your computer go to work and give me your feed back if you think like me that the "Heat Pipes are coming"... "The Heat Pipes are coming".
jejaudio

Showing 4 responses by almarg

Heat pipes are one of several technologies that may be used in computers to cool two specific integrated circuit chips, the CPU chip and the "Northbridge" chip (or equivalent). Those devices consume enormous amounts of power relative to their small size, and would be quickly destroyed without adequate cooling. Also, marginal cooling would limit the speed at which they can operate reliably.

The heat pipes, or other cooling means, are in intimate contact with the two devices, under pressure, and with a thermally conductive paste in between, to fill in microscopic voids that would degrade heat transfer.

The applicability of any of that to a device placed on top of an audio component would seem to be, um, questionable.

Regards,
-- Al
03-28-11: 6550c
Most desktop pcs do not have heat pipes. You would know, because they vent out of the case. Heat pipes are mainly used be the overclocker tweek-geek builders.
You may be thinking of computers that utilize water-cooling. Heat pipe-based coolers, at least those that I am familiar with, vent similarly to any other conventional air-cooled design. Although I agree that they are most commonly found in high performance computers such as those built by overclockers (I am one of them).

See the photos I linked to in my previous post for an example of what I think the OP is referring to.

Regards,
-- Al
Can one of you thermal experts hazard a guess that would provide some quantitative perspective on all of this?

As far as I can tell, given that he hasn't yet posted any links or photos, the OP appears to be referring to a heat-pipe based heat sink assembly that would be used on a computer cpu chip, minus the fan that would normally be attached to it in a computer application. Those things have a contact area that is in the rough vicinity of 2 square inches (around 1.4 inches on each side). Here is an example of a very good one (note that there are four photos that can be scrolled through), having more heat pipes and undoubtedly more radiating surface area than the ones the OP described. What would be your rough ballpark guess as to the reduction in semiconductor case or junction temperatures that might result from loosely placing one of these things on top of a stereo component, either an amp or a low powered component?

1 degree? 0.01 degrees? 0.00001 degrees? My guess, not having much background in thermal design, is that among those three numbers the answer would be closest to the latter.

Regards,
-- Al
Jejaudio, thanks for the clarifications of what you have been referring to.

The Vortex 752 is an ordinary and now obsolete CPU heatsink that was made by Coolermaster, a leading manufacturer of that kind of thing. Here is a link. It sold for about $25 (including fan!) a few years ago, and utilized two heat pipes. It is not mechanically compatible with the sockets that are utilized by current generation CPU's.

Not that it has any relevance to the subject of the thread, but for anyone who may be curious the Thermalright model I linked to earlier uses 6 heat pipes, is compatible with all recent Intel CPU sockets, and sells for about $65 plus the cost of a separate fan. It is too large to fit into some computer cases. It is what I am using in the computer I am typing on now.

Regards,
-- Al