abit and asus's remote cooling craze

[zer0]

ok well here is my question.. i have noticed quite a few abit boards use a heatpipe to move the heat away from the chipset and to a set of copper fins. i have also found one asus board witch does this but its only on newegg and noware elts not even on asus's site. now im wondering what makes motherboard makers find this as a good option all of a sudden? i personaly find it ugly to have a heatpipe winding its way across my mother board only to end at a bunch of fins taking up space where my io pannel should be...


on another note whats up with the rapidly disapering io pannel on abits boards and whats up with the 9 thousand usb ports on the io pannel on my dfi board... (ok this parts pointless...)

[ỒĊBłůē]

I think that Abit are using it to further develop their OTES (Outside Thermal Exhaust System) into Silent-OTES or Q-OTES, see here (http://www.abit-usa.com/news/2005/20050425.php).

Looks like they're trying to move away from NB fans with certain chipsets - I guess folks are complaining about the noise - haven't they heard of watercooling?!

As for the IO panel, Abit has been on the move with this (I think) since their first Max series motherboard. I think it's good to see a company trying different things - most mainstream peripherals connect via USB/FireWire nowadays anyway.

[fillip]

Heatpipe cooling is a fairly logical and affordable step up from traditional 'heatsink + fan' cooling. Uner the right conditions it's more effective and it can also be quieter since certain heatpipe system allow you to use a much larger, slower spinning fan than the traditioanl heatsinks do.


Further to what OCBlue said as well, heatpipes are more effective, as are any heatsink and fan combos, when the ambient air temp is lower, so by being able to situate the cooling fins and the fan which is pushing air over them outside of the case, you'e immediately dropped the ambient temp since the air in your case is much warmer.

I happen to think that heatpipes look quite cool (no pun intended) anyway :unsure:

[BigBen2k]

I think fillip has it right. The cooling solution is still air cooling; heatpipes alone only move the heat to another area, potentially to where coller air is available.

But otherwise, the heat pipe adds to the total thermal resistance, which degrades performance. I don't see a future in it; BTX has a better chance, IMO.