Noctua does not do liquid coolers. It nonetheless does not in the present day, although over at Computex it revealed a prototype for a liquid cooling product. Naturally, the air cooling firm goes about it in a wholly completely different method to the norm. Its liquid cooler has no pump.
Noctua’s design hopes to supply efficient cooling regardless of missing this one key element. Reasonably than a pump above the chilly plate or embedded beside the radiator, Noctua’s design harnesses a two-phase thermosiphon.
“I assume you are aware of the fundamental idea of thermal siphons and fluid circulation being created attributable to density variations due to warmth enter?” Noctua’s consultant Jakob Dellinger asks me.
“Sure,” I confidently reply, although Dellinger explains to me the small print anyway. This is the way it works—on your profit, not mine. Clearly.
“So in Italy or Greece, you see these rooftop water heaters? Yeah, thermosyphon base, warmth the water, after which begin circulating. And that is precisely what occurs right here, apart from a distinction that it is a two-phase thermosiphon.”
“So when the working fluid is over the CPU, it can evaporate and undergo the vapour tube up into the condenser, the place it cools off, condenses again to liquid state after which flows again the return line again to the evaporator to finally evaporate once more.”
It sounds loads like how a heatpipe works with a GPU or CPU cooler—one thing Noctua is aware of very properly. Nonetheless, it is teamed up with an aviation cooling firm referred to as Calyos to work on the thermosiphon undertaking.
“The rationale why that is so such a promising expertise is because of the latent warmth of vaporisation.
“So when you may have a pot of water, it takes, I do not know, perhaps 10 minutes to convey it to boiling, however it can take most likely two hours to evaporate the entire quantity of water. So there’s simply a lot extra warmth capability in that part change course of. And that is what we’re utilising for cooling right here.”
Successfully, a variety of warmth may be absorbed earlier than vaporisation takes place. That is headroom for shifting warmth away from a power-hungry CPU.
The objective is “AIO degree efficiency”, albeit with none of the downsides of an AIO cooler. Primarily, no pump means no pump noise, vibration, or danger of failure.
Although a thermosiphon has one potential downside. It depends on gravity. The 240 mm or 360 mm radiator would have to be top-mounted inside a chassis to work. Additionally it is not a lot a downside, per se, however there are nonetheless followers connected to the radiator on the thermosiphon prototype—if you happen to had been hoping for fully-passive, you finest look elsewhere, such because the NH-P1.
It is one helluva idea, in any case. Noctua will not put an ETA on when it’d arrive, nevertheless, the prototypes are “already trying superb.”
