A heatpipe is a method used for cooling made famous by Shuttle in their SFF computers.
Heatpipes are hollow, cylindrical tubes partially filled with liquid that can vaporize. Heat is absorbed when the liquid turns to vapor in the evaporation process and the heat gets released as the vapor rises. The cooling vapor condensates back into liquid form and is returned back down to the bottom of the cylinder.
Heatpipes transfer heat through the cycle of evaporation and condensation of the liquid within the pipe. Basically heatpipes are placed near the source of heat, and transfer the heat along the pipe away from the heatsource thanks to the cycle of evaporation/condensation.
Image obtained from Heatpipe.com
A. Heat is absorbed in the evaporating section.
B. Fluid boils to vapor phase.
C. Heat is released from the upper part of cylinder to the environment; vapor condenses to liquid phase.
D. Liquid returns by gravity to the lower part of cylinder (evaporating section).
Some users speculate that the orientation of the Heatpipe could affect its performance, given the theory behind the heat pipe this is actually not a bad assumption. In fact, for industrial applications, the design and orientation of a heatpipe would be very specific to maximize performance. But in a CPU or video card cooler, the impact may or may not be as significant.
What we've found at Neoseeker during our reviews is that whether a heatpipe based cooler is standing upright, or standing on its side, the cooling performance difference is less than 1 degree Celsius - so in our real world testing that sort of orientation difference does not seem be a huge factor. Temperature differences resulting from orientation were slight and are likely the result of variations in the test environment.
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