Some personal stuff - and prototypes building!

[vcoleiro1]

I didn't find that to be quiet at all, just as loud if not louder than a normal super el cheapo fan. Not great IMO

 

[Linux-SWAT]

And not really compact.

 

[rv6502-2]

And not really compact.

Those are pretty large but they can be made very tiny. Of course the amount of air moved is reduced too.
They work similarly to insect wings and insects can get pretty small.

The large ones seem to be running around 50-60hz oscillation which is great for running right off the mains.
But like instrument strings: the smaller, the higher the frequency you have to / can run them at.

I did say it was a silly idea

It's also possible to shape air conducts in a way that a simple oscillation will cause the air to move only one way due to compression (sound) waves blocking and bouncing the air off in one direction only with a specific resonant frequency.
The most dramatic implementation of this are "valveless pulsejet engines".
Mechanically simple but excessively noisy.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Anyway that was informative.

Maybe one day we'll have some MHD cooling solutions :^) .

 

[CrystalGamma]

Maybe one day we'll have some MHD cooling solutions :^) .

Is it really a good idea to use electrically conducting fluids to cool a computer?

 

[Confuzzled]

Is it really a good idea to use electrically conducting fluids to cool a computer?

With a high enough potential difference, everything conducts <grin>.

So long as the fluid is adequately separated from the necessary conducting elements by insulating materials, it would be fine. I'd be more worried about the magnetic fields playing fast-and-loose with the electrical current flows.

For innovative cooling methods, of you were to drill a hole through the case into the body of the radiator/heat-sink and tap it, you could screw in an extender (using thermal paste on the screw threads) which you could cool externally. Simplest would be a copper or silver dish or flask which holds ether/isopropanol/water/ice/mixture of salt and ice/dry ice/liquid nitrogen. Cooling effectiveness would probably be limited by the capacity of the heat-pipe to transfer heat from the processor to the radiator/heat-sink and cooling element. Alternatively, screw in an external heat-pipe and radiator.

I really would not want a Pyra to have a fan. Noisy, and tend to clog with dust. A designed-in interface to an optional external chiller/cooler for those that want it would be preferable, in my view. Obviously, other people have different views, which I respect.

The back of the screen/lid would be a great place to put a heat-pipe radiator as you have the possibility of good convective flow of air plus relatively large surface area, which you could increase with vertical fins. The (big) problem would be needing some flexible heat-pipe plumbing between the processor and lid. Way too complex to contemplate.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Is it really a good idea to use electrically conducting fluids to cool a computer?

Air is a fluid.

 

[TrashyMG]

Is it really a good idea to use electrically conducting fluids to cool a computer?

Fun fact water itself is not very conductive, it's usually the minerals in water that makes it conductive. It's why de-ionized water is recommended for water cooling

 

[Djoga'Ro]

Fun fact water itself is not very conductive, it's usually the minerals in water that makes it conductive. It's why de-ionized water is recommended for water cooling

That's doing the right thing for a false reason. Your PC will be dirty enough to make the destilled water conductive as soon as it leaks. You want to use it still, since you want no accumulation of stuff in your cooling circuit.

 

[levi]

I wonder if you ran the CPU hot enough (but reducting the flow rate) you could use it as an actual distilling still, and redistill that contaminated cruft out of the solution.

 

[trix]

I wonder if you ran the CPU hot enough (but reducting the flow rate) you could use it as an actual distilling still, and redistill that contaminated cruft out of the solution.

You know, I've often wondered about the inefficiencies in life and how we could reduce them. It's always seemed strange to me that my coffee maker, for example, uses electricity to heat up the warming plate, while my PC uses electricity to spin fans to cool itself down. I use more electric to heat up my stove to cook stuff, and more electric still to run my AC so my house doesn't get unbearably hot. I used to hold an ice pack from the freezer against the bottom of my laptop to cool it down because the internal fan stopped working, even in the winter when it was literally sub-zero temperature outside. I always liked that my car's heater takes the heat right from the engine and blows it into the cabin.

There's a brilliant idea here somewhere I think.

 

[Binky]

I wonder if you ran the CPU hot enough (but reducting the flow rate) you could use it as an actual distilling still, and redistill that contaminated cruft out of the solution.

That would work, until the contaminants from your coolant ended up caked all over the inside of the CPU's heat-exchanger?

"She was only a humble whiskey-maker, but he loved her still."

 

[CrystalGamma]

Air is a fluid.

True, but you wouldn't be able to use any electromagnetic effects with it without getting it ionized, which is probably not a good idea in the vicinity of electronic components either. (You were talking about what I interpreted as magnetohydrodynamic cooling, which sounds hard to do without affecting the other components of the device)

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Yes, it was this MDH.
Air is so polluted nowadays, it's certainly full of ions ;^) .

 

[Grench]

Air is fluid.
Air is not A fluid. It is a collection of gasses, mostly Nitrogen and potentially some vapors.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

Air is fluid.
Air is not A fluid. It is a collection of gasses, mostly Nitrogen and potentially some vapors.

First two paragraphs from the wikipedia article:
In physics, a fluid is a substance that continually deforms (flows) under an applied shear stress, or external force. Fluids are a phase of matter and include liquids, gases and plasmas. They are substances with zero shear modulus, or, in simpler terms, substances which cannot resist any shear force applied to them.

Although the term "fluid" includes both the liquid and gas phases, in common usage, "fluid" is often used as a synonym for "liquid", with no implication that gas could also be present.This colloquial usage of the term is also common in medicine and in nutrition ("take plenty of fluids")

Also, cool air down enough, it'll become liquid.

 

[levi]

I agree with Grench's position personally. Gases and liquids are fluid (used there as an adjective), but only liquids should be described as a fluid (a noun).

 

[rygD]

You would both be wrong.

 

[ClockworkCoder]

Air as a fluid may be a common definition within specific fields of physics (i.e. fluid dynamics) but certainly it's not a normal definition more generally.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

I have always thought of gases as fluids but not liquids.