A Liquid-Cooled 2-in-1? Acer's Switch Alpha 12

[Guest]

Acer's new 2-in-1, the Switch Alpha 12, is liquid cooled.

A Liquid-Cooled 2-in-1? Acer's Switch Alpha 12 : Read more

 

[Jrood1989]

So it has a heatsink... Laptop's have been doing that forever. Most heatsinks now days have liquid filled sealed tubes for heat exchangers...

 

[hellwig]

So it has a heatsink... Laptop's have been doing that forever. Most heatsinks now days have liquid filled sealed tubes for heat exchangers...

Yep. Liquid systems tend to be active. As far as I know, a "passive" sealed tube working on differential temperatures to move a coolant is a heat pipe.

 

[Jrood1989]

Yes heat pipe is the work ibwas looking for. Long day at work has my brain fried.

 

[McWhiskey]

"Also included with the Switch Alpha 12 is Acer’s optional Active Pen stylus."

Is it included or an option?

 

[Jrood1989]

The option is included, so you can choose. They don't hoard them all for themselves.

 

[LuxZg]

Yup, not sure if they added anything special to the cooling mix, but sounds like vapor chamber plus some kind if heatpipe system, which is a norm these days in laptops, graphics, pretty much all aftermarket PC coolers, and even some phones. So not sure how it's different enough to warrant such title on TomsHardware of all places. I could understand reading that in local newspapers, but not Tom's *shrugs*

 

[photonboy]

The ONLY way this makes sense is:

Heat pipe->
Heatsink (may be small)

It's a fanless system, but saying it's "liquid cooling" isn't accurate AFAIK. I thought that implied a pump/rad etc.

Anyway, I don't understand what's different between this and other mobile devices with heat pipes.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Liquid ? It's hard to gauge were we see more exaggeration and outright misrepresentation:

Advertising, Electronic Media, Politics or Hollywood's "based upon a true story".

And they even doubled down on it ..

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/acer-liquid-extend-primo-laptop,31657.html

 

[photonboy]

The ONLY way this makes sense is:

Heat pipe->
Heatsink (may be small)

It's a fanless system, but saying it's "liquid cooling" isn't accurate AFAIK. I thought that implied a pump/rad etc.

Anyway, I don't understand what's different between this and other mobile devices with heat pipes.

 

[tntom]

So this is neither Liquid cooled or Water cooled. It has a sodium filled heat pipe like every other device on the market.
They simply named it Liquid as part of their marketing. Liquid Extend, Liquid Jade Primo, Liquid Zest Plus; which are names for both SW and HW.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Yes...in short its like almost every other CPU mounted heat sink

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pipe

At the hot interface of a heat pipe a liquid in contact with a thermally conductive solid surface turns into a vapor by absorbing heat from that surface. The vapor then travels along the heat pipe to the cold interface and condenses back into a liquid – releasing the latent heat. The liquid then returns to the hot interface through either capillary action, centrifugal force, or gravity, and the cycle repeats. Due to the very high heat transfer coefficients for boiling and condensation, heat pipes are highly effective thermal conductors.

 

[RedJaron]

Marketers keep calling vapor chambers "liquid cooling" because it sounds cool ( no pun intended ). But over-zealous marketing aside, this can make a big difference as low-power cooling on tablets and phones is often completely passive, using nothing more than a thermal pad between the chip and the case. A heat pipe of any sort can dramatically improve cooling without requiring a fan.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Same with the tall, tooth heat sinks on RAM whose only real cooling function is to "look cool"

 

[memadmax]

Some ignorants here that can't read.

It says: "Instead, as coolant passes through the loop over the processor, the heat generated by the laptop expands the gas within the loop, propelling the coolant through the circuit."

So its a phase change system. It's basically how an A/C system works but has the phases reversed. It boils the liquid into a gas at very low temps then circulates it around until it changes back to a liquid then boils it again...

It's not a "HEAT TUBE" but it is, technically a liquid system.

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

Have the original Switch 12. Gotta say, new ones are boring. Just another 2-in-1 whereas the oriignal has only detachable keyboard (ONLY keyboard, search for photos) which is wireless and doesn't even have to be docked for the device to stand upright. So comfortable to work on, Acer really had something unique there. Now... meh.

 

[Valantar]

From looking at Acer's promo video (Pcper has it embedded, it's probably on YouTube as well), this is more than just a conventional heatpipe design. No idea how accurate the rendered video is, but it looks like a heatpipe leading to a vapor chamber, which again is connected to some sort of heat dissipation/ vapor condensation loop. I don't believe for a second that it can dissipate 15W worth of heat while maintaining pleasant skin temperatures, but it's probably better than a simple heatpipe setup.