Gizmodo: liquid cooling

Apple Patents For Liquid-Cooled Portables Surface

Seung Lee — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:20:00 EST

While us normal folk were gorging on turkey and fixings, the tireless US Patent Office was busy filing an interesting Apple patent detailing a mobile liquid cooling system—something that looks like it could be used in a future portable device.

Initially filed in May of 2007 (it's government, people!), the patent app describes a two-part cooling system for small form factors. In the first part a liquid coolant is used to transfer heat away from components (such as a quad-core mobile processor, perhaps?). In the second phase, the heat is transferred from the liquids onto a large aluminum plate which would then pass it off into the environment just as most laptop temperature management systems work today.

Whether this is just another defensive or out-there research patent, or an actually useful new way to cram more power into a smaller space via liquid cooling remains to be seen. Let's hope Apple's next patent is for a brand new battery juicy enough to power the whole system for more than 20 minutes. [US Patents Office via CrunchGear]

Bloo Balls Custom PC Case Mod is a Whole New Kind of Punk

Kit Eaton — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:52:32 EDT

This custom case mod made for Bit-Tech is just eye-grabbingly bizarre... from the outside alone. Built by a guy called Craig, Bloo Balls was over a year in the making, which included and a whole lot of careful design, redesign and fabrication. There's a mass of careful plexiglass-carving in there, including a hand-made, custom-crafted liquid cooling system for both P4 processor and northbridge. Plumbing and CPUs don't often mix, which is why the build included one fried motherboard. Check out the gallery: it's amazing, inside and out. So amazing, it almost warrants its own genre name... we're just wondering what to call it.

That pic is of the guts of the beast—it's all glistening plexiglass and copper plumbing. And in my mind that sets off a "steampunk-meets Buck Rogers-style retro sci-fi" feeling, complete with flashing lights and lurid plastic colors, but without Tweaky. But that name isn't catchy enough. Over to you guys...[Bit-Tech]

Lian Li Cranks Out Super Hot Armorsuit PC Case

Haroon Malik — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:50:00 EST

We just checked in with the guys at Lian Li, and we managed to peek a look at their hot new PC cases. The best of the bunch is the Armorsuit enclosure, shown in the image above. It's smoking. The case has a solid aluminum construction (with plastic side windows), nine 5.25-inch device bays (including two 3.5" x 3 HDD cages), three LED fans, LED lined heat exhaust and liquid pipe inlets for solvent cooled systems. If that doesn't sound great; check out the gallery, revise your opinion and eat humble pie.

Lian Li has been busy at work; they have an entire product refresh that is expected to drop soon. Unfortunately, the website is yet to be updated, but the new range will consist of at least 10 new models. As we said, the big daddy is above, but if you want something a bit more moderate, Lian Li has you covered. (Check the gallery for different iterations of the above Armorsuit.) [Lian Li]

Noisy HTPC Fans? CoolIT Silently Does the Job with Liquid

Charlie White — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 13:36:50 EDT

Home theaters are not good places for PCs—the big complaint with home theater PCs (HTPC) has been their noisy cooling fans on their processors and graphics cards. Now CoolIT Systems makes liquid cooling more accessible with its Home Theater PC Cooler, a self-contained system specifically designed to easily drop into a media center PC.

The maintenance-free system fits into the space normally reserved for a couple of three-inch cooling fans, replacing them with a radiator and tubes that carry cooling liquid around the CPU and graphics processor.

Pricing and availability weren't announced yet, but other CoolIT cooling systems cost around $300 on the street. Expect to see this liquid cooling concept—long a favorite of overclockers everywhere—to become more mainstream soon. – Charlie White

Liquid-cooling system keeps your PC frosty [Sci Fi Tech]

Triple-Decker Case Mod: Whoa!

Charlie White — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 09:35:54 EDT

Case mods get more and more sophisticated, and here's a skyscraper of a PC created by Ediejo, which started out as a mild-mannered Lian Li aluminum PC case and now it's been taken to the extreme. Take a look at the worklog that describes the progression of techniques to put together this monster.

It's a liquid-cooled tour de force, with its top and bottom floors stuffed with liquid-cooling paraphernalia, with two cooling loops, one for graphics and one for the CPU chip set. The guy has obviously spent thousands of hours putting together this highly-detailed machine. It's hotrodding for the 00's. – Charlie White

The Extreme Lian Li by Ediejo [bit-tech]

AlienWare Steps Into Liquid

Noah R — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 14:53:00 EDT

It's no match for the lrechner that we dredged up earlier in the week, but AlienWare is stepping into the liquid cooling pool. The Aurora 7500 now comes with specially-designed technology that delivers improved cooling of up to 30 percent. And it's quieter because there are no internal fans (and we all know that DOOM 3 requires an utterly silent CPU). Add the GeForce 7800 GTX KO, AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 processors and NVIDIA SLI, and AlienWare once again finds an excuse to tell everyone that it is delivering "the ultimate gaming experience!"

Alienware Gets Cool with Aurora 7500 [DesignTechnica]
New Aurora 7500 [AlienWare]