Tiny PC Cooling System Could Revolutionize the Market

A strong cooling system is what stands between high-performance and frequent failures, for any computer. This is why a number of companies specialize in the development and manufacturing of better and easier to use cooling systems. But cooling manufacturers aren't the only ones looking for better ways to improve the cooling technology for today's computers. Some researchers at the Purdue University have also dedicated their time in developing a new way to do that for current computer chips.

As a result, these researchers announced last week that they succeeded in creating a tiny refrigeration system that could be used to cool both laptops and desktop computer systems. According to them, this technology will be available for all computers within two years, and it should enable PC manufacturers to improve the cooling system in traditional portable computer systems and allow them to build much smaller computers, said Suresh Garimella, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue.

"Traditionally, you use a fan to blow air on a chip -- room temperature air," said Garimella. "If I could push chilled air onto the chip, then I get a lot more cooling. The devices are designed to dramatically increase the amount of heat that can be removed from a computer," he added.

This system is used to pump refrigerants through tiny compressors and tubing. Apparently this technology could be integrated into a microprocessor or in current air-cooled heatsinks.

Garinella estimated that gaming systems will be the first to use the new cooling technique, as they require a strong cooling system in order to deliver high levels of performance. As soon as the technology becomes more popular, we should also see it in high-end laptops.

The technology is impressive and should change the computer market, enabling it to deliver higher performance machines. Still, at this time there are no details concerning the manufacturing costs of such a system, so we can't really estimate what its success level will be.