News Asetek bring liquid cooling to laptops

Asetek has demonstrated a new liquid cooling system for laptops and AOI PCs.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/03/23/asetek-liquid-cooling-laptop/1

 

Hey, as soon as it's affordable, count me in.

 

Woah this is insane, the price will be massive though espically if alienware are to play a part.

Interesting stuff though.

 

I really don't see the advantage of a liquid cooler in a laptop; chiefly because of all Aseteks touted claims can be achieved by heatpipe/vapour chamber coolers. There's no reason why a laptop CPU/GPU can't share a heatsink or series of connected sinks. Exactly the same results as the liquid system only potentially more compact, uses no extra power, has a lower chance for mechanical failure and would be lighter (less fluid involved and no pump).

 

liquid inside a laptop? what could possibly go wrong?!

Than again, with the very fixed nature of laptop components you can easily have a solid, non-expiring fluid path removing almost all sources of potential leaks...

 

JCBeastie advantage is _much_ faster liquid transfer over components along with _more_ water (the more water in the line the colder any given component will be).

 

I'm honestly astounded this is the first time that anyone has ever spoken about liquid cooling (a great thermal dissipation technology) in a small thermally challenged consumer-orientated environment (laptops).

Seriously, this should have been done years ago!

 

That was quite a chunky laptop, and if there was a voltage increase, and extra power due to pump what is the battery life like?

 

The main limitation is the amount of of radiators surface area and air flow over the radiators with the main advantage of desktop water cooling lying in the fact it can effectively distribute heat to a much larger radiator than pipes.
Liquid cooling will actually infringe on that constraint due to being bulkier than a normal heat pipes

 

Wonder what effect on battery life will be.

 

Goes without saying that this will need to be bombproof.

Very niche market, but +1 to Asetek for innovation, if it works as the video states.

 

if it is a low power pump then the battery life will shorten in idle situations but it might stay the same when it is at load because the chips will run cooler and run more efficient. don't forget forget that lcd screen use the most battery power.

 

I still have a clevo d900t (non functional) and the insides look very similar to that apart from the pump of course. Oh, if any one needs any parts for a d900t pm me, the thing is just sitting around gathering dust.

 

The thought of a water cooled laptop horrifies me. It might be fine when new but a year or two on its just something else to go wrong, imagine a water leak on the motherboard - terminal! Plus what effects would air travel and the pressurization changes have in promoting a water leak.

 

You are ultimately limited by the heat exchanger, and since this solution doesn't offer any more surface area compared to a traditional heatsink I fail to see the improvement. Heatpipe coolers have proven to be very efficient, since essentially they work under the same phase-change principles as say; a fridge. Liquid coolers have an advantage that they can transport heat to a larger radiator than you could sit on top of say, a CPU, hence greater cooling ability.

All this soloution adds is bulk and greater chance of failure. I'm not convinced.

 

I wonder if they will have some way to top up the liquid.

 

There shouldn't be a need. It's the same principle as with the Corsair H series. It is a hermetically sealed environment so if you actually need to fill it up you have a bigger problem since it will be leaking somewhere!

 

It has been done a few times before but never got very far. I beleive Lenovo tried it once, as did someone else.

 

Ahh nice. It would be good to start getting laptops that dont cook peoples testicles for a change Not that I would ever buy one, way too expensive for me. Maybe if I win the lotto some day.

 

Our local pub has liquid cooling, has had it for years.