HEAT PIPE questions

[Gene396]

Don't find any articles or discussion about heat pipes. Are they any good? Do you know of any reviews or forums? Heat pipe principles sounds like a very good way get away from noisy fans and still have good cooling. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks Gene

 

[OulOat]

Heatpipes doesn't reduce the need for noisy powerful fans, in fact they might increase the need for it. All heatpipes do is to help heat for the bottom of the heatsinks reach the fins faster, much like a highway for travelling. Thus, your fins would get hotter quicker, and it's probably the best idea to use a powerful fan to dissipate all that heat.

 

[etech]

The guy at benchtest.com has done some interesting experiments with heatpipes. Worth the read if you are curious about them.

benchtest

OulOat is correct. A heatpipe just transfers heat. The advantage in them may be that you could build a heatpipe and transfer the heat out of the case and than use a very large radiator to get rid of the heat. A less noisy or no fan might be able to be used in that case.

 

[orion7144]

Here is another good write up on the Heatpipes Tom's HW.

 

[Gene396]

Thanks for the response; each had very good information. I enjoyed the one about building a heat pipe. By having the fan outside the case could be the wave of the future.

I will wait for futher developments before making the jump.

FYI got to overclockers.com and click on "ratings of water and fan cooling." The highest rating was for Cooler Master IHC-H71; a heat pipe for P4s with a "C/W" rating of .16!!! If you don't know what C/W means; they have a very good explanation. For the AMD users skip down further and you will find the top HS is Thermalright SLK 800 with a C/W of .23.

Thanks again guys!! Gene