Micro Heat Pipes - A Promising Means of Thermal Solution for Desktop Computers

Heat transfer performance of parallel micro heat pipes (MHPs) used for the cooling of desktop computer processor has been investigated in this paper. MHPs consists of six single tube micro heat pipes connected by a copper block-at the evaporator section and fifteen parallel copper sheets used as external fins at the condenser section. Ethanol was used as working fluid. The copper block is placed above the heat source (on the top of the processor) and the condenser section is provided with external fins perpendicular to the MHPs. Heat transfer characteristics of MHPs are determined experimentally, based on the principle of phase change of the working fluid. The experimental results show that, the maximum and steady state temperature of the processor has been reduced significantly by using micro heat pipes instead of the cooling fan. Addition of fan at the condenser section of MHPs gives much low and steady state temperature of the processor.