Low-noise cooling system for pc on the base of loop heat pipes

The problem of current importance connected with a wide use of personal computers (PC) and a rapid growth of their performance is a decrease in the level of noise created at the operation of cooling system fans. One of the possible ways of solving this problem may be the creation of passive or semi-passive systems on the base of loop heat pipes (LHPs) in which the heat sink is an outer radiator cooled by way of natural and/or forced air convection. The paper presents the results of development and tests of several variants of such systems, which are capable of sustaining an operating temperature of 72-78degC on the heat source thermal interface which dissipates 100 W at an ambient temperature of 22 degC. It is also shown that the use of additional means of active cooling in combination with LHPs allows increasing the value of dissipated heat up to 180 W and decreasing the system thermal resistance up to 0.29degC/W