"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 kijanki

Al - I agree. I can see some relevance in laptop design where larger heatsink or heatsink with fan might not fit but cannot imagine any sense of it in SS amplifier where output transistors that generate heat are already mounted to external heatsinks. Placing heat pipes "on top of my amps near the transformer" makes absolutely no sense to me. I vote for 0.00001 degree.

"You may be thinking of computers that utilize water-cooling"
Heat pipe is liquid cooling - typically ammonia with alcohol.
"The heat sink designer can now factor the shape of the sink as well as the thermal conductivity."

Shape is already included in thermal resistance - length isn't. Extrusions are often specified in degC/W/inch.

The purpose of heat pipes is to remove heat (using liquid inside) from the location where large heatsink won't fit or operate properly (no air flow). Heat pipe connects such hot spot to external heatsink (with some temp. gradient).

Making electronics colder is not necessarily a good thing.
Main problem is to make signal path including output transistors as fast as possible to avoid delays hence TIM.
Heat makes bipolar transistors faster - a good thing (MOS gets slower with temperature - benefits from cooling). It has not much of the effect on reliability as long as junction temp is kept within reason. The only negative effect of heat is life of electrolytic caps shorten by half for each 10 degC increase.
Paste suppose to improve thermal contact since surface is never perfectly smooth (to lower case to heatsink thermal resistance).

Jejaudio said: "It's keeping everything in your computer cool inside so it can work as efficiently as possible."

It might slightly improve efficiency of computer that is mostly cmos (cooler MOS = faster = lower losses on switching) but does nothing to efficiency of typical SS amp (unless we're talking class D).

Sebrof - I don't have a clue what it does have to do with either. This is perfect example of the "Gardener's Syndrome" that makes people constantly trim, improve etc.