Sunday, June 10th 2007
OCZ demonstrates the future of cooling
OCZ has been showing off its latest computer cooling technology at Computex 2007 this week - a heatsink made of directional carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes are an allotrope of carbon (ie. a certain form of carbon - diamond and graphite are other examples) and are predicted to be the next major advancement in cooling, due to their superior thermal conduction properties compared to current materials such as copper and aluminium. According to OCZ, carbon nanotubes are five times more efficient than copper when it comes to cooling, and due to their design they can be used to transfer heat in just one direction - other materials such as copper tend move heat more radially, which isn't always desirable. They are constructed by making small wire-like structures using sheets of graphene just one atom thick and rolling them into cylinders, which allows heat to be moved in one direction as it is moved along the alignment of the nanotubes. The cooler itself is called the OCZ Hydrojet, but there is no information on when this will be available for retail - or how large the dent in your savings will be if you want to buy one.
Source:
DailyTech
21 Comments on OCZ demonstrates the future of cooling
Anyway, are these meant to be fanless? It kinda appears that way. I plan on building a full size HTPC very shortly out of my spare parts, and I think something of this nature may be just what the doctor ordered, so to speak.
I remember it was an intergrated radiator as well...
Cant wait til they hit retail, as with a fan (blowing the right way, of course) they should be quite good.
Its basically a miniature water-cooled system, its got a nanotube base instead of copper, and uses a small internal pump to get the heat to the fins - because the nanotubes are one-way, in theory this means that so long as the produced heat is pushed away via a fan or two, CPU temps will barely rise even as you overclock/raise the voltages, since the heat cant come BACK.
Reading from the inq link, OCZ think this can take upto 400W of heat.
:)
Picture from the cebit thread.
I thick it would look cool with some L.E.Ds in it:cool:
Any word on how expensive the material itself is compared to Aluminum and Copper? We need to start seeing cooler prices coming down, and above all, benchmarks.
Thats why this new unit comes in water/air flavours and no phase change - so they wont have teh same problem again.