Eoraptor

January 17, 2012 at 9:03pm

Vapor cooling is nothing new... this is basically just a refinement of standard heat-pipe cooling technology that we've seen for a decade or so on the CPU, transitioning from cylindrical bent pipes to flat fluid channels with much higher surface area-to-fluid ratios. Really it's kind of a "duh" move that was only waiting on the metallurgy to catch up and allow non-cylindrical channels to exhibit the same structural rigidity as their round counterparts.

Yes, it would be MOST efficient in a vertical arrangement, but in any closed system vapor boils off of the CPU's heated contact area, and then moves away to any cooler area (those being cooled by the heat radiating of the fins) and then condenses and flows back to the CPU area to replace the material being evaporated off. It's basic thermodynamics and fluid movement, the same way that air and water currents move around the Earth from hot to cold.

(And YAY! maxPC finally fixed the posting box so that firefox spell check works!)

Danthrax66

January 17, 2012 at 5:38pm

The heat will still transfer to the "cold" metal regardless of position since metal conducts heat better than air. Graphics cards have been using vapor chambers for a while glad to see it finally being used in CPU cooling.