A Heatsink That Could Be 30 Times More Efficient Than Today's Setups

I would expect that something like this could be made smaller to also fit inside laptops. Neat idea!

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In space, no one can hear a tree fall in the forest.

I hope they patent this chip cooling gagdet. It seems like a great idea.

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Every day is a new day!

Oh another thought, I wonder with futher development, it could be mounted and adapted on top of a cars engine for better coolling; expessially for cars that are air cooled?

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Every day is a new day!

I hope they don't patent it, so we can avoid a 20 year monopoly, like we had with Wacom's battery-free digitizer pens.

This story made the rounds on facebook last week. Its a great piece of tech all the same.

So what happens when this heat sink is exposed to vibrations or shock from a small drop or bump? Something tells me a metal heat sink fan moving at 2000rpm hitting a stationary base would cause some damage. Nice idea.. needs some fine tuning before it would work with laptops and other mobile devices.

Varisity,
Luckily, there is no data on the base of this spinning heat sink, should it be bumped or dinged.

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Every day is a new day!

One thing people don't seem to know Sandia National Laboratories is run by the US government, not a commercial company.

Dust claim is bogus. Where did this clown get a degree from?

This isn't new. It is same as any type of power steering pump or home ac fan.

At least when a contact type heat sink fan fails, the heat sink has a way to limit temps. This would destroy a chip in a second with high heat.

Did my tax money go to this? What a waste.

All this is based on a huge assumption: They can efficiently transport the heat from the static base to the spinning cooler without them physically touching each-other. Air is a very poor conductor of heat.

Even two pieces of metal touching each other aren't efficient enough for computer applications. That is why you use thermal paste when installing heat sinks on processors. The microscopic pockets of air between the metal surfaces inhibit the transfer of heat. Just to give you an idea of how important this is, the difference between a good thermal paste and a bad one is 10 degrees C.

It is interesting that they barely mentioned the largest technical challenge (1:41).

Would love to have a nice quiet fan for my GPU though.

looks a lot like the warp engine that i saw once in an alien ship when i was abducted one for 24 hours. they tried to wipe my entire memory but didnt succeed.

"You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." -Morpheus

Does this mean my motherboard must remain in a horizontal position?

@ComputerUser

Why would it need to be horizontal if it has a motor on it?

Anyway its about time somebody combined a fan with the heat sink, i had thought of this myself but i guess they beat me to it. I think this should already high use; not many people felt to improve the need of CPU cooling by merely changing the design.

Geet-neat, but impractical for home user. Biggest issue is efficiency of the air gap in moving heat - you can optimize the hell of the fin design, but when you have an air gap between the stuff you are trying to cool and the heat sink, it's a *doorstop*, not a cooler. Even if we get past that somehow, who'd want a free spinning (at 2000rpm) metal piece in their expensive computer? It may work in the lab sitting on a horizontal, stabilized table, but in real life, it would have to be on a bearing, which would negate much of the advantage. Another big issue is lack of directional exhaust. Again, it's fine in a lab sitting by itself, but 360 degree exhaust heat would wreak havoc inside a computer box. None of these real issues are mentioned in this rather long video.

The down side to installing this new advance heat sink. The computer techician become hypnotize, after energizing the unit. So installation time goes really up.

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Every day is a new day!

Assuming that they solve the heat transport issue (I'm not holding my breath), you could mount two (or more) of the coolers externally on the top of the computer case and use liquid to transport the heat from the CPU/GPU to the base of the cooler. This would keep the heat out of the case, and be compatible with existing hardware.

I could be wrong, but I think that any kind of mobile application is out of the question for this cooler (laptops, cars etc.) Gyroscopic force will be extreme and it will resist being tilted. Too much force to be held in place by an air bearing.

@Stellarman "Why would it need to be horizontal if it has a motor on it?"

Read the article. The cooler and base are not in physical contact while the cooler is spinning. So, if you tilt it to the side, the two components will touch (bad).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVjBeAzbUMI

Fail.
Heat transfer under these conditions would not be sufficient enough for many applications. Also the suspended device will insulate itself from the base. If they could introduce some type of liquid heat transfer layer into the gap, this might work. Until then I'm sticking with my 1-lb hunk of copper, cooled with a large quiet 1200rpm fan. :D
If you want to make an active cooling system, you need to maximize surface area using a 26th order newton fractal combined with an external dynamic element. That's how trees do it, that's how stars do it, and that's how these guys should do it... Another government project funded by imaginary monies, with military imagination as it's basis. Anyone else see the potential lethality of this device?

Also did anyone else notice how much noise that motor was making? I can hear CTR monitors buzzing from three rooms away and this thing would have me pulling my hair out with that whining.

JediMindset,
If the aliens attempted to whipe you memory, how do you know if they succeded or not? If you do not remember, what is missing, then how do you know, you are missing selected parts of your memory or not? Perhaps in your memory washing, they implanted thoughts of you not loosing your memory as they added additional thoughts into your mind, giving you the belief all is well.

Currently, our USA government tells the american public all the current falsehood being promoted is the baby generation is causing the social security system and medicare to go bankrupt in 10 to 20 years as they omit the facts that President Johnson and all the other polititians after him, (Democratic and Republican alike), spent the excess savings we had stockpiles for the social security and medicare system years ago.

@Robot,

i think that you are correct. they could have easily implanted "fake" memories into my mind. thats why i forgot what chicken tasted like!!!!!

"You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." -Morpheus

Sorry people. Neither the author of this article, nor democede, nor GregN913, nor Varsity are correct. Air is drawn down from the top, and the air bearing does not sit directly on the chip, it sits on a baseplate with heatpipes which sits on the chip.
Dead-air static boundary layers are reduced by 90%, and the thermal efficiency is already proven and not speculative. This technology has already been licensed by two substantial companies, and will soon enter production.
For additional technical info, please refer to the following short url - http://ppci.me/b/FXBV
That News Article is titled- Sandia Cooler Air Bearing Heat-Sink-Impeller is Quiet & Dust-Immune – Expect Much Faster CPUs

Thank you wordman, that makes sense to me.

@Wordman - "thermal efficiency is already proven and not speculative"
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In your technical reference, thermal resistance is expressed as an adjudicative, not as any quantitative unit. Not very useful.
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I am excited to see some actual data to compare it to other after market coolers. Until then, I remain skeptical.

---Wordman

Democedes-
The people at Sandia Labs really are "rocket-scientists".
Here is a link to some of their FAQs- http://www.extremetech.com/computing/90272-the-fanless-spinning-heatsink-your-questions-answered-by-the-inventor
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Also, don't know if you read this article-
http://ppci.me/b/FXBV
It should prove helpful.

Also just do a search on "Sandia Cooler", and be sure to go to the Sandia Laboratories site.

I don't know about everyone else, but I like to prowl around the various national labs and public research centers now and again. I don't remember seeing this though. Cheaper than a cryo coolant system, but as resistant to damage as with being bonded with the processor and the board?