A System Design of Liquid Cooling Computer Based on the Micro Cooling Technology

The high speed of data processing with quiet operation is an on-going issue for computer business industries. The demand for quiet operating computers shows the conventional cooling technology limit for high CPU power. A few alternative cooling technologies have been proposed to pass the limit with a lower acoustic noise emission. In this paper, we introduce a design approach for a liquid cooling system, one of the most promising alternative cooling technologies. The liquid cooling system consists of a microchannel heat sink, liquid pump, and heat rejecter for personal computer applications with high CPU power. The cooling performance of the liquid cooling system is predicted by using numerical calculations, which is compared with experimental results. The thermal resistance of the microchannel heat sink with a hydraulic diameter of 680 mum is 0.1 K/W from chip surface to fluid. The liquid pump provides backpressure and flow rate of 10 kPa and 400 mL/min respectively, using de-ionized water as working fluid. The heat rejecter is a plate-fin type exchanger having triangular cross sectional shape with a 120 mm diameter fan. Total thermal resistance of the liquid cooling system is evaluated as 0.23 K/W from chip surface to ambient