Spinning heat sink could lead to faster computers | Journal of ...

Melissae Fellet, reporter

A redesigned heat exchanger could speed up your home computer, while reducing fan noise and energy use.

Air-cooled heat exchangers haven?t changed much in 40 years, says Jeff Koplow, a researcher at Sandia National Laboratories. A disk absorbs heat from a computer?s processor and transfers it to a row of attached metal fins. A fan stirs up the air around the heat sink. But only about five per cent of that energy provides a cooling effect. Why? A pesky layer of stagnant air clings to the fins, insulating them like a blanket. Spinning the fan faster helps, but it also makes computers intolerably noisy.

These limitations impact processing speed. Chips can run faster, but the fans can?t cool them fast enough to prevent overheating.

(Image: Jeff Koplow)

In this new design, dubbed the ?Sandia Cooler,? the fan is the heat sink. Bands of metal blades rotate above the heat source atop a thin cushion of air. Centrifugal forces roil that air to facilitate heat transfer. They also compress the layer of stagnant air against the blades, reducing that insulating effect. Cool outside air pushes away dust as it flows through the center of the spiral and out the sides.

Koplow, who designed the cooler, is working with others to mass-produce these quiet fans cost-effectively. If they become widely adopted, he estimates total US electricity consumption could drop by about seven per cent.

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Source: http://journaltec.com/2011/07/12/spinning-heat-sink-could-lead-to-faster-computers.html

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