One thing confusing me until now is that the efficiency of heatpipe based coolers.

When heatpipe based coolers first introduced for mainstream usage, the explanation was that the liquid inside the pipes have very low boiling temperature thus it will evaporate under certain temperature level. The evaporated liquid which brings heat moves to the top of the pipe, which then gets cool or condensed and flows back down to the hotter part.

To make it simple, it's the liquid inside the pipes which mainly does the job.

I have a few doubts in mind.

1. Isn't that the way the heatpipe works supposed to be following the gravity law? Hot air goes up, and when it's cold, it goes down (cold air heavier than hot air)? Or do they just move from hot area to cold area like how air supposed to work in the atmosphere? I have seen many heatpipe based cooler which when we put inside the casing, the orientation is not upright, instead, the heatpipe end points toward outside of the casing, away from its base. While in many reviews, usually the person who did the review lay down their system flat instead of putting the heatsink inside the casing.

2. How efficient is the liquid inside the heatpipe? How much thermal energy can they dissipate compare to a normal copper cooler with good fan?

OK... now I understand....

but still.... do heatpipes really able to transfer a lot of thermal energy that fast?

This post has been edited by soulfly: Jul 9 2006, 11:48 PM