Computer Problem Solution

The heat has moved from the CPU, to the heat sink, to the air inside the case, to the air in the room where you're sitting at your computer desk. The room starts to get hot, and eventually the air conditioner turns on.

You can view an air conditioner as a "pipe". A fan blows the hot air from your room through fins that transfer the heat to a liquid. The liquid is piped to fins outside the house. A fan blows cooler outside air past the fins to remove the heat from the liquid.

The air conditioner has an evaporator valve that changes the liquid to a gas after the heat is removed. In a gas, the molecules are further apart than in a liquid. This causes it to cool down quite a bit more. The gas goes through the fins inside the house, picking up heat. It is then compressed into a liquid to concentrate the heat so the outside fins can remove the heat more efficiently.

Shuttle's I.C.E. (Integrated Cooling Engine) Heat Pipe uses a very similar method to cool a CPU. The CPU has a heat sink with copper heat pipes. The heat of the CPU causes liquid coolant inside the heat pipe to change to a gas. Convection created by the pressure of the gas moves the coolant to a second heat sink where a fan is used to blow the heat out of the computer's case. Releasing the heat causes the coolant to change back to a liquid. Gravity then carries the coolant back to the CPU heat sink.

One last method of heat transfer we haven't discussed yet is radiation. Some of the heat of the CPU and the heat sink is released as infrared radiation. Similar to light (although invisible to human eyes), the radiation strikes the insides of the computer case, causing it to get warm. Ultimately the computer case itself acts as a heat sink conducting heat to the outside air.

This article explains the three ways - conduction, convection, and radiation - that heat is transported from a computer CPU to the air outside the computer case. You now understand the thermodynamics of a computers and why it is important to maintain its various components.

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