Quiet Cooling With a Copper Foam Heatsink 171
Zothecula writes: The Silent Power PC is claimed to be the first high-end PC able to ditch noisy electric fans in favor of fully passive cooling. In place of a conventional fan, the unit uses an open-air metal foam heatsink that boasts an enormous surface area thanks to the open-weave copper filaments of which it's composed. The Silent Power creators claim that the circulation of air through the foam is so efficient in dissipating heat that the exterior surface temperature never rises above 50 C (122 F) in normal use.
Brillo-iant! (Score:5, Funny)
And you can keep the pots and pans clean!
Re:Brillo-iant! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but does it do windows?
</ducks>
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but does it do windows?
</ducks>
Nope. That's too much of a chore, boy.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, you can run Windows AND OS X on a Raspberry Pi at the same time. And that's on the 256Mb model:
https://twitter.com/sergiu_par... [twitter.com]
Better have windows 9 when it comes out (Score:2)
Better have windows 9 when it comes out.
Perfect (Score:5, Insightful)
... for a dust free room!
Re:Perfect (Score:5, Interesting)
Dirt and dust is what I thought of also. While no moving air will help in that it won't draw as much air through it as a filter might, it will still collect lots of dust in hard to clean areas.
The only thought I had, which seems impractical, is to be able to remove the heatsink and place it in a ultrasonic cleaning bath like those used for jewelery. I could see it as an interesting curiosity, one I wouldn't mind cleaning once a year so so if it were on display. But I can't see it being a practical alternative for home use.
If it's very efficient maybe there's a benefit on putting them on rack-mounted servers that have cool, clean, air blown through them. Might decrease the density of servers you can put in a rack though, so there'd have to be a pretty good efficiency gain over active cooling to make that worthwhile.
Re:Perfect (Score:4, Insightful)
Cleaning it will only be a problem if the product is soft. If it can support being hit with 90PSI air without bending at all it will be easy to clean. Depending on the type of copper used it should sustain 90PSI very easily.
Re:Perfect (Score:4, Informative)
The hardness of the structure can be many times lower than the hardness of the material when you're talking turning it into FOAM. Compare the hardness of steel wool and steel.
If this is anything like I'm envisioning, you could probably take a 3" block of the stuff and step on it and crush it down to about 1/4-1/8". And unlike traditional material foam, this stuff isn't going to spring back.
Even if it can survive the blast of air, it may just serve to drive the particles deeper into the block. A filter has to be thin or very porous to insure air pressure can drive most of the trapped materials out.
I'm betting the best way to deal with dust/dirt in this case is to simply filter the air very well. Very fine dust should be removable with air, but you don't want anything at or above large dust particle size getting into that foam or you'll never get it out.
Re: (Score:2)
Or clean it with fire. Put it in a red hot flame and it should clean right up.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Perfect (Score:4, Informative)
No. A static charge will always attract neutral particles, due to the magic of induced dipoles. Positive, negative, alternating, it makes no difference.
Re:Perfect (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe they should add a fan to blow the dust out.
Re: (Score:2)
or just cover it with shrink-wrap to keep the dust out
Re: (Score:3)
You need to move air through it. Otherwise you know what you get? An insulator!
Tiny pockets of air are very good insulators - it's why you use stuff like spray foam, fiberglass, etc., in your house - the material itself doesn't matter. The fact that the material traps air in tiny pockets makes it very insulating. Aerogel is one of the best insulators around - and it consists of basically air and a tiny silica weave to trap it in little pockets.
This thing does have copper so it will transmit heat, but the ai
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Insulating foams are usually closed cell foams because that traps the air. Flowing air would kill the insulation.
In this foam the cells are far from closed. They are designed to be as open as possible. In that case there is flow, and a lot of it. What matters next is the surface area to dump heat through. Open foam has a lot of surface area.
The material does matter. Copper is still a good conductor, while most insulating materials are made of plastics. Plastics are already quite decent thermal insulators.
Th
Re:Perfect (Score:5, Informative)
Implicit question answered here [silentpowerpc.de]. For the tl;dr & tl;dt folk: Use a vacuum cleaner.
Vor Staub braucht man keine Angst haben, denn durch den inneren Wärmepuffer kann Staub nicht bis ins innerste vordringen. Staub im äußeren Bereich lässt sich dank der Offenporigkeit leicht mit einem Staubsauger absaugen. Weil der SilentPower keinen Lüfter hat, wird Staub auch nicht wie bei normalen Computern angesaugt. Du wirst sehen, dass man ihn seltener entstauben muss als einen normalen Desktop-PC. Dennoch gilt das selbe wie bei allen PCs: Regelmäßiges Entstauben schont die Hardware.
just wondering,.. (Score:3)
How stable is that foam and how good will it conduct heat once it gets squished by my cat/children/me accidentally putting a bottle/glas on it?
-> without some kind of protection cage this seems kind of a bad idea,..
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
"without some kind of protection cage this seems kind of a bad idea"
Good thing you're not en engineer and design person, then.
Guess what typically surround metal heat sinks?
Protection cages, like computer cases, amplifier cases, etc.
What're you even doing on here if you can't think of something like that?
Re: (Score:2)
-> without some kind of protection cage this seems kind of a bad idea,..
You mean like a PC case?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
500? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
It's has a tremendous surface area. For more then you fins.
For comparison, then on the surface area of a brick cs the surface area of a sponge.
Re: (Score:3)
They are using the entire case as a heat sink, both the GPU and CPU are mounted directly to the top of the case. The foam is a gimmick, it would probably work just as well with fins.
This will likely make upgrades difficult/impossible.
Kickstarter warning (Score:5, Informative)
This is not a real product. It's just being crowdfunded. The only evidence that it works is a claim by the creators that "the exterior surface temperature never rises above 50 C (122 F) in normal use", without specifying what "normal use" is.
It might work and if so, great! I can't trust this article at this moment, however.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Normal use" for my grandparents is "Off"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And you still need a fan even if it works, just not as large. Something needs to create an air flow within the chassis.
Re: (Score:2)
For silence you do need a large fan (or no fan). SilentPC's goal is to make silent PC's and that means no small fans rotating at high speed but big fans rotating leisurely.
Or no fans at all. Convection can be quite strong if you build the thing as a chimney.
Re: (Score:2)
*Exterior* temperature? My current heatsink can manage a CPU temperature below that, with the fan at idle. Why would I want to downgrade to this thing?
Donations WTF? (Score:2)
Because they don't seek to make a profit? because a charitable thing to do is create computer heat-sinks for the poor abused computers???
Seriously what the fuck are they doing asking for 'donations'.
Per-orders, fair enough, but donations should go to good causes, not £%^£"$£%^ing fancy PC heat-sinks.
Re: (Score:2)
You realize, of course, that Kickstarter exists to do nothing more than manage donations, a great many of which go to some variety of bleeping fancy PC toys?
Re: (Score:2)
Except you usually get one of those fancy toys for your money. I backed a rear-light with integrated bike-cam on Kickstarter and the product I got was well worth the money.
If someones giving money to Kickstarter to make fancy toys that other people will buy and the creators will profit from but then don't get one of those toys then either they're unbelievable stupid, vastly wealthy or somewhere inbetween.
As Flammable as Steel Wool? (Score:3)
Re:As Flammable as Steel Wool? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:As Flammable as Steel Wool? (Score:4, Funny)
Just dial: 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Copper corrodes fast when the temperature is raised.
At my old job we worked with copper coated strip at 310 C. If you turned the N2 protection gas over the oven off the damn thing would turn black in seconds. Corroded.
I don't know what it'll do at higher temperatures but at 310 C it corroded fast.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Now I'm wondering if we've entered the era when crackheads are more technically competent than the average Slashdotter...
Re: (Score:2)
Will this "copper wool" be as flammable as steel wool? If so, that could spell trouble.
No. This is much less fine than steel wool: try burning a steel scourer. Second, copper is substantially less reactive than iron.
Re: (Score:3)
Simply by looking at the reactivity series, you can tell that copper is considerably less flammable than iron. OTOH, powdered copper burns with a nice green colour when tossed into a Bunsen flame.
For a practical standpoint, you could ask if steel wool burns in the temperatures of a CPU heatsink. Probably not, and this copper sponge is much less of a risk. Of course, if you like living on the edge, and tweaking CFLAGS [funroll-loops.info] is not enough, try an entire case [gizmodo.com] made of a notoriously reactive metal.
Old news. (Score:5, Informative)
Bought a no-moving-parts power supply back in... oh, I don't know, 2003 or something. Sold as "cooled by heatpipes", pretty much the same principle - silent, no moving parts, passively cooled, no fans, huge surface areas.
They also did kits for the processor itself but I've also bought P2-era motherboards that were designed to be passively cooled too (same thing, huge heatsink, no fan).
So this is certainly not "the first" in the PC world (unless we're talking about "the first" to use some particular technology that just about replicates what I bought over 10 years ago). Not even close. In fact, it's over a decade out. And going outside the PC world, passively cooled chips are pretty common - you have a tablet or smartphone without a huge stonking fan, no?
The PSU is still working 10 years on if you'd like me to dig it out. I'm sure it wouldn't take much to butcher it to do the same job to the processor, especially if you can safely have it clock itself down to prevent heat being generated in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Old news. (Score:4, Insightful)
And so the article, and the quote in the summary, are just plain lying:
"The Silent Power PC is claimed to be the first high-end PC able to ditch noisy electric fans in favor of fully passive cooling."
Re: (Score:2)
If they manage to stay below 50C with that hardware (i7, 760 GTX) under a load it's indeed impressive.
FTFY.
I just put together a box with a $50 mobo and AMD FX-6150 with stock heatsink/fan combo, and it runs at less than 45C all day long.
Re: (Score:2)
But it didn't use foam; just rudimentary heat sinks and a well-planned ducting system. Oh yes, and the heat it generated melted the solder used to connect the monitor to the motherboard in the first few batches that came off the line, until they started using higher tolerance solder.
Wow, talk about a wrong solution to the problem! If your solder joints are melting the IC's they connect to the PCB are also taking a heavy beating. Or did they use GaAs? (probably not, seeing as it was only $2600 in 1986)
there already are heatsinks (Score:2)
that under """normal""" use don't reach 50c without a fan
also, they are not the first to think about this. back in the athlon xp days i thought of a "hairbrush" like heatsink with many tiny copper strands
however, heat transfer from sink base to each "fiber" is relatively weak
Same tech, but as a normal heatsink (Score:3)
I would rather have a normal heatsink (in popular form factors) for CPU and GPU out of this material. You would still want airflow through your case, or even on top of the heatsink, but RPMs of those fans would hopefully be much lower, making much less noise.
Silent is a noble goal, but I would be happy to use standard cases and components being very quiet.
Applicable to laptops? (Score:2)
Could this be used for laptops, and maybe tablets and phones?
I would think so. Laptops already have vents. A smaller, slower, quieter fan may be necessary.
Surface area, it is why I prefer crushed ice on a hot day.
I am skeptical (Score:4, Insightful)
OTOH, in a copper fin configuration, the ratio of surface area to volume is (2lw) / (lwt) = 2/t.
In other words, if you use the same volume of copper and the thickness of the fin is half the diameter of the sponge cylinders, you have the exact same surface area. The thinner fins may be weaker, but since the additional fin material on the sides reinforces the structural strength, I assume that's not too big a deal. Just place thicker (stronger) fins along the outsides and you have a structure which is much more solid than the sponge.
Now consider that in passive cooling the airflow is slow enough to be laminar. The flat surface of the fins (oriented vertically) will then impose less aerodynamic resistance, leading to higher flowrate, and thus greater heat exchange.
Unless there's something else going on here (maybe the sponge filaments are wrinkled instead of smooth), or it's that much harder to make thin fins than spongy cylinders, I don't see how this could be better than a traditional fin-type heatsink.
Re: (Score:2)
In other words, if you use the same volume of copper and the thickness of the fin is half the diameter of the sponge cylinders, you have the exact same surface area. The thinner fins may be weaker, but since the additional fin material on the sides reinforces the structural strength, I assume that's not too big a deal.
I agree with the rest of your argument, especially including the fluid flow part. However, I'm not sure if this part works out, it really depends on other assumptions. For a point load I agree -- the load is spread across the width, at least to some extent. But with a wider surface, you generally experience more load, proportional to the size, and there's no benefit in connecting the fin segment to neighbouring segments. So the cylinder would be stronger in this sense. It's the intuitive idea of increasing
Efficient? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, I can glue a chunk of styrofoam on a CPU, and the outside of it won't even get that hot. I wouldn't use that fact to claim that styrofoam makes a great heatsink, though. Quite the opposite.
Re: (Score:2)
I was about to say basically the same thing - the interesting number on a heat sink is how cool it keeps the heat *source*, not the coldest outer edges of the heat sink.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm so sorry, please forgive me for actually searching for a relevant comment to contribute to rather than just posting a top-level comment with the exact same sentiment for the 10th time as is the norm here /sarcasm
Re: (Score:2)
What are you running? (Score:3)
I've been ocing processors for years now; I've never felt comfortable letting even the die temp get that hot.
I've ran a i7-920 at ~5.5G for a few seconds, it only hit 80C before it turned off. It still runs; most 920s are good for 4.3-4.6 on a good heatpipe heatsink.
I'm running a 3930k now at 4.6G; it only has issues ripping DVD's, for some reason. It won't do that over ~4.2G.
I'm using a few year old 6x 6mm heatpipes in a copper base; it even has a "Black nickel" finish, so the copper fins won't corrode.
I n
Re: (Score:2)
I never run above 60C with stable clocks, usually...
Seriously, what processor will run that hot?
Most of 'em. My eee 900 (which I'm posting from) has been hovvering around 60C for about the past 5 years. Current uptime is 114 days and it's sitting comfortably at 58C at the moment.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
A computer case that doubles as the heat-sink FTW!
At 70 lbs, it could also double as a boat anchor.
Increasing surface area of your heat sink is a much more efficient way to dump heat than increasing the thermal mass of your heat sink.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I love how the page sells it as "Developed using heatpipe technology to create a 100% passively cooled environment," right above a picture of the back of the case, which features,
wait for it...
A fan mount!
Gives me a chuckle.
Not a high-end machine (Score:5, Informative)
It's using a Core i7-4785T, an "ultra-low power" processor (shown by the T suffix - S indicates a "low-power" part, and K indicating an overclockable part). This particular one is a 35W part running at only 2.2GHz, while the regular i7-4790 runs at 3.6GHz (and 84W)[citation] [wikipedia.org]. Turbo boost can bring that up to 3.2GHz on a single core (on the regular chip, 4.0GHz). So the CPU is not a regular desktop chip at all, let alone a "high-end" one.
The Nvidia GeForce 760 is a bit of an interesting choice. It's not powerful enough to be called "high-end" (I would apply that label only to the 780 and 780 Ti of that series), but it doesn't fit with the ultra-low power CPU. If they were thermally constrained (as their CPU choice indicates), I would have expected to see the 750 Ti - not too much weaker (~30% [citation] [anandtech.com]), but with a far lower power draw (it's the most powerful card to be powered only by PCIe, no extra power connections needed). Seriously, the 760 is a 170W card, and the 750 Ti is a 60W card. Seeing how they handicapped the CPU to shave off 50W, I don't see their logic for not shaving 110W for a similar performance penalty.
Because of their choice of CPU, I can't really support their claim of being a high-end desktop with passive cooling. They are much more powerful than most fanless PCs, but most fanless PCs are also designed for industrial use, not for regular office/home environment. So it's an improvement, but not a revolutionary one.
So Cool (Score:2)
Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why more or less all contemporary heatsinks started embedding heatpipes some time ago, since that was the only way to get a reasonable amount of heat to the more distant parts of the heatsink.
This 'sponge' is more aesthetically interesting; but I see a lot of surface area that is only tenuously connected to the actual heat source. Newer Intel silicon just doesn't pump out the watts the way the old stuff did, so it might actually work; but I'd be shocked it if works any better than a much more prosaic heatpipe-and-fins design.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Theoretically, probably, yes.
However, the efficiency will probably just not look good enough once you see what you have to pay for it.
This same foam structure but with some trick causing thicker strands at the bottom would be a nice approximation.
Perhaps it is possible to centrifuge the thing before cooling the copper? Copper would flow over the strands to the bottom side, thus the bottom would have thicker strands.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that this doesn't pass the sniff test. A foam has a low ratio of metal to air, it's the cross-sectional area of the copper that allow vertical conduction of the heat from the heat spreader plate. This has little copper area so conduction is limited. It's further worsened by the random nature of the strands so the heat is conducted laterally as well as vertically and so the conductive thermal resistance is increased because the heat needs to travel a longer path.
So while I'm not saying it doesn't
How bad is your noise, really? (Score:2)
I had recently upgraded the CPU in my living-room MythTV PC to an i7, using the standard Intel fan cooler from the retail box CPU. (It originally had the lowest i3 Celeron I could get, because I wasn't sure I would finish it.) The PC itself was in an Antec quiet case which generated little noise.
Upon waking from a nap on the couch, I heard the sound of a fan and thought that it was coming from the PC. Once I had fully awakened, I realized that the noise was actually coming from the main air intake to the c
Aerogel (Score:3, Insightful)
Reynolds number (Score:5, Interesting)
basically means that for slower airflow, you need larger gaps for air to flow through. This is why the sponge is bad for heat dissipation, and great for insulation. It's kind of intuitive, but it's nice to have some science backing to it. Having a large surface is good, but it doesn't help if the airflow across the surface is limited.
On a side note, I've been on a quest for quiet cooling since the very early 2000s, incidentally after getting a physics degree. It's mostly in the last couple of years that I've started to see really sensible coolers in the general market. For example, the usual CPU cooler in the olden days had a fan pushing right against the CPU with minimal fins in between, meaning there's a considerable high-pressure centre with no airflow. No one with a fluid mechanics 101 would design crap like that. OTOH, the traditional CPU/mobo setting is a little problematic; first you put the most heat-concentrating element in the middle of everything, and then later you realize it needs cooling. (I'd put the CPU socket on the reverse side and use the case as a huge heatsink...) Now finally the designers have the sense of using a straight sideways airflow, combined with heat pipes. Why the fsck did this take so long?
I used to strive for pure passive cooling, but in the end I don't mind a large, slow fan -- it's enormously better than no fan, and still indistinguishable from other background noises. This is another nice thing to see in cooler designs, from the 1-inch whiner in my first Linux laptop to the 140-mm quiet giants that can easily manage a couple of hundred watts of GPU.
BTW, if you ever need to explain somebody how a heat pipe works, take them to a sauna.
Re: (Score:2)
The theory is that the exhaust air from the CPU heatsink spreads out to parts that are more heat-tolerant but still need active cooling, such as the voltage regulators. A VRM that can operate at 100C without trouble can be cooled just fine with a slow flow of 50C exhaust air from the CPU cooling system.
In practice, people
How is this better than the Mac Pro? (Score:2)
Would anyone here doubt that a Mac Pro is a 'high end machine,' or that the posted specs for system noise don't make that "quiet?
One difference is obvious, you can go see, listen to, and buy a Mac Pro right now.
Re: (Score:2)
The mac pro* is quiet, but it isn't actually silent. It's close, but there's still a fan in there. You just can't see it clearly - it's on the bottom.
*I assume you mean the flower vase model.
Looks familiar (Score:2)
Their copper "foam" reminds me strongly of the brass "sponge" that I use to clean the tips of my soldering irons. I wonder if there's a DIY cooling project I've been missing?
Noise? (Score:2)
Filter (Score:2)
What a neat looking dust filter. Probably will do a good job catching cat hairs too.
Dust? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't call it vaporware, you could cast molten copper into an ant colony and get something looking like that, or 3D print.
For the latter you can't put the "Thousand of lives were lost to bring you this fine piece of hardware" label onto it though.
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't call it vaporware, you could cast molten copper into an ant colony and get something looking like that, or 3D print.
For the latter you can't put the "Thousand of lives were lost to bring you this fine piece of hardware" label onto it though.
Suddenly I wish there was such a thing as a Bothan ant...
2.2 GHz (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
" I wouldn't call a 2.2 GHz processor a "high end" PC."
Oh, look, another ignorant idiot that thinks clock speed is everything.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, look, another ignorant idiot that thinks clock speed is everything.
Clock speed is pretty much everything. The only real differences come into play when the number of cores are ramped up. Then it becomes a voltage and heat arms race.
Re: (Score:3)
"Clock speed is pretty much everything."
Clock speed is useless as a benchmark. Eventually, it's all down to how many instructions per cycle get carried out. Your pussy 5.0 GHz 2 instructions per clock cycle (making for 10 billion instructions per second) pales in comparison to my 2.5 GHz 8 instructions per cycle (20 billion instructions per second.)
See how quickly your clock speed arms race got destroyed?
This is why real performance is measured in IPS or FLOPS, not clock speed.
Re: (Score:2)
Clock speed is pretty much everything.
Sure, pal. Except that even the ancient Pentium 4 was already available at 2.2GHz. In other words, clock speed is pretty much nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, pal. Except that even the ancient Pentium 4 was already available at 2.2GHz. In other words, clock speed is pretty much nothing.
And how many cores did it have. Right, now think very slowly as to why when they switched to dual cores, they ran at a slower clock speed. I'll wait for you to figure it out.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
DUST
So you've come up with the ultimate heat sink, but now you have to run it in a positive pressure ventilation clean room.
Might as well just stick the PC in the closet and run an HDMI over Ethernet to your desk and use wireless mouse/keyboard. Now that we're not forced to use a maximum of 9' VGA cable, and nobody uses physical media anymore, there's zero reason not to stick the PC somewhere else and run an extra CAT-6 drop for the video (HDMI over Ethernet needs 2x1gbps)
Caps cause use of physical media (Score:3)
nobody uses physical media anymore
"Nobody" is a strong word. People who pay $10 per GB for home Internet (sat, cell, or Iowa DSL [slashdot.org]) still use physical media.
there's zero reason not to stick the PC somewhere else and run an extra CAT-6 drop
Unless you're renting and the landlord won't let you modify the walls.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm glad I could make your day by making a broad statement that you could nit-pick to feel better about yourself. Congratulations on your tiny win! You deserve it.
Re:Pretty sure it wasn't the heat tiles. (Score:4, Informative)
The tiles on the shuttle's belly were the complete opposite. The main tiles on the belly of the shuttle were roughly 10% silica fibers, 90% air. Think very low density styrofoam, except that it can be heated to glowing temperatures without losing its properties. This was actually the really cool demo that I saw. The person giving the demo heated it with a torch until it was glowing yellow/white, then picked it up with his bare finger tips. Because the thermal conductivity of it was so low, it could be handled (with care) with bare hands.
For the OP, the point of the thermal protection system was precisely the opposite of being a heat sink. It's entire purpose was to insulate the shuttle against the heat that the belly was exposed to during re-entry. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of heating during re-entry was due to compressive heat (think diesel engines, boyles law and all that), Not friction. Basically the shuttle would compress the air in front of it, causing it to heat up to plasma type temperatures, which was then transferred to the body of the shuttle through convective heating. As such, the best way to deal with it was just to insulate yourself, and wait for the high temperatures to pass.
Re: (Score:2)
The tiles on the shuttle's belly were the complete opposite. The main tiles on the belly of the shuttle were roughly 10% silica fibers, 90% air. Think very low density styrofoam, except that it can be heated to glowing temperatures without losing its properties. This was actually the really cool demo that I saw. The person giving the demo heated it with a torch until it was glowing yellow/white, then picked it up with his bare finger tips. Because the thermal conductivity of it was so low, it could be handled (with care) with bare hands.
You might have notice that the person held the TPS tile by the corners, not the edges. Had he touched the middle of the tile, where he had hit it with the torch, he would have been severely burned. The amazing property of the tile is that it would maintain a high thermal gradient, so one part of it would be super hot but just 1 cm away it would be cool enough to handle. This is related to thermal conductivity as you mention, but it is not the heat transfer property that you imply (like 80 degree water scald
Re: (Score:2)
Better not catch you playing games on this thing or you're liable to start fires.
I'm more worried about cleaning it. This thing looks like a magnet for dirt, dust, and other airborne particles. When those particles settle on the heatsink it will ruin the copper-air interface and this thing won't cool at all.
I also wonder what happens when the inevitable patina develps:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]