Zalman Wants You Designing Its Next Heatsink

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When it comes to heatsinks, cooling computer processors, I noticed that bigger is better (Surface area) which results to quieter and cooler system.
The problem is that we could not make things any larger and Zalman already has one of the best air heatsinks already.
I believe Zalman can make a premium heatsink that is easy to install with a performance similar to highend air.

No maintenance liquid cooling using a 120mm radiator and fan, with a design not far from Cool IT or Corsair, is in order for the requirements. With the expertise of Zalman, you can create a product that can differentiate from those two above in terms of performance and aesthetics while providing ease of installation, performance, and cleaner appearance system.

I believe this system can also do without fan (noiseless), if the radiator is thick enough and be installed externally (cable length and routing, design consideration).
 
My main idea is to integrate the heat sink into the cpu case, thus using the case as the extended heat sink for more surface area, and extending the heat sink fins outside the case and in contact with the cooler air outside the case.

Idea 1: Design cpu case with integrated cpu heat sink on the top part of the case. A separate piece of heat pipe/heatsink is bolted down on the cpu socket and the other of the heat pipe is a plate that is screwed into the bottom of the top heat sink.
http://img97.imageshack.us/i/heatsink1.png/

Idea 2: Design cpu case side panel that is also a heat sink. The trick is to design a clip that can detach the side panel/heat sink. We can have fanless design with the whole side panel with fins. http://img291.imageshack.us/i/heatsink2.png/

Or we can have heat sink that extends outside the side panel with fan. For aesthetic we can make the protruding heat sink and fan look like the air intake of turbo charged cars / funny cars.
http://img707.imageshack.us/i/heatsink3.png/
 
[citation][nom]quantumrand[/nom]Actually, a Peltier engine would be really interesting, and with today's ridiculously over-powered PSU, there's plenty of extra amperage for some extreme cooling. I don't really see with working as a fanless solution though, considering there would be quite a bit of waste heat that would need to be expelled from the system. Still, with the proper setup, it could potentially outperform a watercooled system.Speaking of water cooling, a Peltier engine would work extremely well in that situation as well. It could be attached to the radiator, which in most cases already has a proper exhaust setup. The only issue I see with this is that the water would take a while to cool down, so optimum cooling wouldn't be achieved until the system had been running for some time.[/citation]ok, i'm not admitting to know much of this subject, but... umm... this has been done already (2007) and is currently being used by companies such as CoolIT. It's is generally listed as "TEC" or Thermoelectric Cooling.

It started with H2Ceramic --- google it.

Aren't you guys being silly...
 
I'm currently using pretty much the physically largest heat-sink I've ever seen in any pc. But i would like a new system based off gpu heatsinks aka i want a heatsink which then directs the air outside the case via as others have suggested, flexible pipes. When this is done you could realistically have an external fan if that somehow makes cooling easier (maybe thanks to an external power source or something).
 
Easy use ur guys idea of a oil filled computer case except make it a refillable box u mount over the computer chip that u open the top and put oil in there,, also a good idea to make a enclosure for a video card that u just fill with oil.

curtisc
 
couldnt they use a extension of somesort that the chip mounts onto then runs from outside the case to the inside,, making external cooling possilbe
 
Just dusted off the good old blender skills... err... lack of blender skills; and installed Photoshop Elements 6 again and got to work.

I'm mainly focusing on more user-friendly water-cooling. I hate to say it, but it's not worth all the hassle for me to go through the trouble of tracking down all the pieces of a water-cooling kit, and trying to drill out a few missing holes to stuff everything into my case, fill it with water, and hope it doesn't leak.

Here are some Blender renderings of my main submission - an external, all-in-one water cooling system:
http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss235/Mark3Website/e1render1.jpg
http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss235/Mark3Website/e1render2.jpg
http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss235/Mark3Website/e1render3.jpg
http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss235/Mark3Website/e1render4.jpg
http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss235/Mark3Website/e1render45jpg.jpg
http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss235/Mark3Website/e1WCS360.gif
I would have liked to put the .blend file on here, but I just can't find any decent file-hosting sites short of setting up my old gateway as a server. I apologize for the extremely low quality of the GIF animation... I guess there's a reason some animators are free and others aren't. :sarcastic: I'm sure you can all tell that I'm not exactly a blender 'veteran'.
http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss235/Mark3Website/e1WCS-final2m.png
Zalman, you could make a lot of profit from entering the water-cooling market. I'd definately buy this if you made it. 😀 The closest I've seen have been the two-bay 120mm water cooling systems that go in the 5.25" expansion bays. This would be a lot nicer, for me at least, because the pump, radiator, reservoir, and electrical equipment are all in a little aluminum box the size of a fairly small printer, greatly reducing the risk of water-cooling related issues. It would also make installation and maintenance a lot easier, too, since all you have to do is fill it and run the tubes through your WCS ports on the back of the case and hook them up to any waterblocks you have.
If you could pull this off, you'd be able to make quite the profit off of it - I'm sure I can't be the only person who is looking for something similar to this.

Secondly, here's something that falls under the category of, "Wow, that's crazy, but might just work..."
http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss235/Mark3Website/hybrid.png
It's basically your typical heatsink/fan (fans aren't pictured; one 120mm can be mounted on either side if space allows), only with a water/coolant chamber going up the center, dividing it in half. The coolant chamber would disperse heat much faster than air, and six traditional heatpipes would do the job of a regular cooler. Basically, it's a TRUE with a copper/aluminum waterblock running right up the middle to the fins. If my logic is right, this should have a serious performance advantage over traditional heatsinks.

Here's another thing I'd really like to see:
http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss235/Mark3Website/onepiecewaterfinal2.png
I've been trying to find something like that for ages, and have since then given up. Once again, the closest anyone has come is the Corsair H50. I'd buy this, too, if you made it. And if it actually worked. :)

Lastly, I'm going to step away from the Enthusiest market for a while and suggest a much better HTPC/Server cooler than what is currently available on NewEgg:
http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss235/Mark3Website/HTPCSide.png
http://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss235/Mark3Website/HTPCFront.png

And there you have it. Good luck to all the other contestants, too.
 
Functionality should come before aesthetics. Some of the top selling coolers have been nothing more than big heavy blocks of metal. Design it to work well at a low cost to the consumer, and then give it flair.

You might also try some customization of some sort, so that each user can customize it somehow. i.e. Maybe they can do some sort of simple metal color/dye dips at home as an add-on accessory.
 
I would like to see an all in one water cooler like from astek and corsair, but with the ability to mount a fan above the cpu where the pump and heatsink part is to actively cool the area.
 
Zalman makes cases. Zalman makes CPU coolers. They should combine the two. When I look at all the aluminum on my case, I shake my head at how much work it could be doing, but isn't. Currently, a case is not much more than a metal box for containing all your components and the hot air that they generate. I suggest that they design a case that integrates external heatsinks into the outer panels of the case, with a heatpipe system for connecting the internal components to the panels.

Think about how much external surface area is on a case, and think about how much work those surfaces could be doing dissipating heat instead of containing it. The right panel of the case could be an aluminum plate covered with small vertical (for convection) fins, connected via heatpipe to the CPU. Aluminum may not be as efficient as copper, but it would be cheaper (cases are already made of aluminum), and considering the amount of surface area this heatsink panel would have, it would not need to be efficient. The front panel could be a heatsink for RAM and/or GPU cooling. Better yet, have the front and right panels combined into one large heatsink, with all three components connected to it at different points, and let the material balance the heat dissipation naturally.

This is the case I have been waiting for someone to make for years. I have seen concepts and one-off mods that follow this case-as-a-heatsink design strategy, and there are even HTPC mini-ITX cases that work exactly as I am describing. To me, it's common sense, and I don't know why a major manufacturer hasn't taken the idea and run with it.
 
I want a space station with a fan positioned in the middle of it to mimick solar panels spinning around the vertex of the ship. Bonus points if you can switch out the space station for an alien space ship that has tentacles coming out the end (better heat dissipation) and keep the fan around the middle of the heatsink to mimick some sort of fish-like fin array. Then you can call it [insert my name]'s Alien Dissipator. I've always wanted a pc component named after me... 😀
 
i want a heatsink that in order to attach the fans you have to somehow get this stretched out paperclip to stay hooked on this tiny little notch on the edge of the heatsink and then have the end of it poke into this hole on the corner of the fan that seems like it's an impossible distance away...
 
Another idea, in the old days all heatsinks were painted black to increase heat dissipation. For some reason this is not done nowadays I know that having the heatsink painted black does not make much difference but every little helps. I think a black heatsink with a gold plated copper base and heat pipes would look cool.
 
I won't use a huge heatsink/fan for the CPU ever again. It puts too much weight and stress on the board. I went cheap liquid 3 years ago and I'm never going back. Just make something similar to the one corsair sells, but better. (I don't own the corsair one)
 
having a design with HDT, and a small mini fan just over the processor. it should aid on the uptake of heat by the heatsink i suppose. as for the top, triple fan design, like [|[|[ where [ are the fans and | is the blades of the heatsink.
 
There are a couple of challenges to cooling, in no particular order:

Heat transfer, both to the radiator/heatsink, and from the heatsink. Air is notoriously bad at it, hence heat pipe technology, water cooling loops, etc, to move heat from source to radiator. At radiator/heatsink, it's all about large surface area to move heat into the air. (We're going to ignore exotics like LN2 here - impractical for the masses)

Large surface area is constrained by the volume of space within a case, i.e. ATX, uATX, mITX form factors, hence relatively high fin density of heatsinks and radiators. This causes airflow restriction, and more importantly, heat transfer efficiency (or lack thereof) and noise.

It's about tradeoffs, as well as commercial viability. Not many people are willing to spend hours assembling and maintaining a water loop, let alone spend the time acquiring the know-how and skills to initiate such projects in the first place. Hence the popularity of Corsair's H50 and Coolit's ECO ALC systems. They are far from optimized water cooling systems, yet still match the performance of high-end air coolers, due to the inherent advantage of using water to transfer heat.

I therefore suggest a radical redesign. Make a specially designed entire case one massive radiator (probably has to be closed-loop water like H50 for flexibility), don't waste any surface area. (A proof-of-concept/inspiration could be the Alphacool CORA series of passive water radiators). Imagine if both the entire sides of your ATX case was one big radiator, equivalent to having something like 2 sides of 15"x15" *flat* surface area, neglecting fins, etc. Would take minimal internal space, for a big-ish pump that could take up the volume that a usual air-cooler would.

Would have to have easy to add-on items for cooling GPU, etc. Easiest solution would be to use standard enthusiast grade fittings, with quick-release, self-sealing fittings which can then be exchanged/added to as new parts are added.

In summary: a closed-loop water-cooled radiator that is shaped like a computer case, with the necessary holes for mounting motherboard, PSU, 3.5" bays, fans, etc. etc. *within the cooler, basically like a case*, along with a single combined pump+CPU block to begin with. Has multiple (2-4) quick-release, self-sealing T-joints (probably G1/4) to which GPU blocks and other such can be easily added, and coolant topped up as necessary. You can sell specialised coolant adding kits that maintain the closed-loop integrity of the system.

The upside of all this is that you can cool the computer/case without even using case fans! (The case WILL be VERY VERY heavy though.)
 
I always thought it would be pretty crazy to have a water cooling system where the "Pump" was attached to the side window inside the case and had a valve system that only allowed for 1-way flowing,,,
this way you can have a piston push then pull on it from the back, creating a pulsing effect when viewed from the outside,,,
then I would take it a step further and allow for 2 chambers in the valve system along with a secondary piston which was about 15-30 degrees behind on the push pull as the primary so that there was a constant flow through the valves, but it would maintain a pulsating look,,,

Then finally once that was figured out,, make the valve system look like a heart and have the arteries out of it go to the CPU & GPUs seperately and then go to the radiator, main reservoir, then come back to the "heart" as the veins,, have the veins dyed a slight bluish tinge and then have the arteries/heart a red tinge,,

I realize having it push on the window is not ideal and perhaps having an acrylic panel that reinforces the side in some way by being attached to the front & back panels would help,,,,, or even crazier,, supported by a metal ribcage that goes back and screws in to an area below.
 
[citation][nom]Syndil[/nom]Zalman makes cases. Zalman makes CPU coolers. They should combine the two. When I look at all the aluminum on my case, I shake my head at how much work it could be doing, but isn't. Currently, a case is not much more than a metal box for containing all your components and the hot air that they generate. I suggest that they design a case that integrates external heatsinks into the outer panels of the case, with a heatpipe system for connecting the internal components to the panels.Think about how much external surface area is on a case, and think about how much work those surfaces could be doing dissipating heat instead of containing it. The right panel of the case could be an aluminum plate covered with small vertical (for convection) fins, connected via heatpipe to the CPU. Aluminum may not be as efficient as copper, but it would be cheaper (cases are already made of aluminum), and considering the amount of surface area this heatsink panel would have, it would not need to be efficient. The front panel could be a heatsink for RAM and/or GPU cooling. Better yet, have the front and right panels combined into one large heatsink, with all three components connected to it at different points, and let the material balance the heat dissipation naturally. This is the case I have been waiting for someone to make for years. I have seen concepts and one-off mods that follow this case-as-a-heatsink design strategy, and there are even HTPC mini-ITX cases that work exactly as I am describing. To me, it's common sense, and I don't know why a major manufacturer hasn't taken the idea and run with it.[/citation]

You underestimate Zalman sir.
http://www.zalman.co.kr/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=116
 
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