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 noise level 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 external radiator cooled by 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 72–78 °C on the heat source thermal interface which dissipates 100 W at an ambient temperature of 22 °C. It is also shown that the use of additional means of active cooling in combination with LHPs allows to increase the value of dissipated heat up to 180 W and to decrease the system thermal resistance down to 0.29 °C/W.