Some personal stuff - and prototypes building!

[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.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

@ClockworkCoder Before I studied technical facility management, I would have said the same thing, but now liquids and gases are fluids to me - although after getting my diploma in 2006, I never occupied myself professionally (neither in any other form productively) with anything related to thermodynamics.

 

[ClockworkCoder]

@ClockworkCoder Before I studied technical facility management, I would have said the same thing, but now liquids and gases are fluids to me - although after getting my diploma in 2006, I never occupied myself professionally (neither in any other form productively) with anything related to thermodynamics.

Indeed, I was speaking from a layperson's perspective. Undoubtedly air is fluid, whether or not it actually A fluid

Actually I was mostly trolling for entertainment and to buy time for @ED while he works on that video update for us

 

[Djoga'Ro]

I just meant to say, four years bothering with thermodynamics, while fluids weren't a daily topic, changed the meaning of the word to me - or rather what its more significant meaning is to me - and in 13 years without any focus on thermodynamics day-to-day life didn't claim back the pole position. But now that I think about it, that might very well be, because the German word Fluid isn't used very much in day-to-day life.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Split from pedantic thread.