Seen this yet? fanless "heatsink" pc case + psu

KenAF · Post by **KenAF** » Thu May 29, 2003 8:08 am

Directron has posted the following upcoming product to their web site. They claim the entire case is one giant heatsink; it uses copper heatpipes to transfer the heat from the chipset, graphics and cpu to the case. It also has a fanless power supply. They claim it will cool a P4 3.06.

rpc180 · Post by **rpc180** » Thu May 29, 2003 9:02 am

Wow, that looks promising. I would hope some of those technologies will make it into the aftermarket eventually. The first thing I'd want would be the fanless PSU...

I guess the multiple heatpipe CPU cooler would work since the heat is transferred to different parts of the case for the most part.

PS
Does the first shot of the overall case look a bit funny to you also?

marc999 · Post by **marc999** » Thu May 29, 2003 9:37 am

Thanks Ken for bringing this case to our attention. Funny thing is, it just occured to me this last week that a company should come out with a case where the case itself was used as a heatsink. It makes terrific sense. I demand royalties !!

Geeze, I just spent a whole wack of cash on a modified D8000 case just to read about this case. Also today I read (from Mike C himself) that 120mm fans aren't the best, it's probably better to go with 2 x 80mm fans. Of course, the whole reason I bought the D8000 was for the dual 120mm fan support.

Sometimes I wonder if I am single handedly supporting the whole worldwide economy with the money I spend on quiet PC stuff !! If I ever stop I bet the whole world will go into recession !!

rpc180 wrote,

Does the first shot of the overall case look a bit funny to you also?

Yeah, it's kinda ugly looking, but for that kind of technology and *silence* I think I could put up with it.

PretzelB · Post by **PretzelB** » Thu May 29, 2003 11:22 am

Interesting and tempting but I'll believe it when I see it. If it does work, I can't imagine what they're going to charge.

Where was this article that says 80mm fans are better than 120mm? Common sense says that more CFM is better so why wouldn't 120 be better than 80?

ez2remember · Post by **ez2remember** » Thu May 29, 2003 12:06 pm

The lowest practical kick start and running voltage for 120mm fan is 5v, which is still considered too noisy by some of us, including myself. Also if you are using 120mm fan at the back of the case i.e. exposed, noise is just exhausted out like the PSU.

If we take the Panaflo L1a @ 5v I estimate it to be ~9dBA and pushes ~10cfm, two of these will give ~12dBA for 20cfm. No 120mm fan I have seen/read about will give you 12dBA at 5v, although it should give you more cfm. Most 120mm fans are in excess of 30dBA at 12 volts.

I call it the "bearable limit", which 120mm fans will never give low enough dBA. Ahanix/Jamicon 80mm fans are only 15.9dBA at 12v and at 5v, it will be silent to most who are use to 120mm fans.

KenAF · Post by **KenAF** » Thu May 29, 2003 1:20 pm

I hope ExoticPC will pick up on this case and become other vendor for it, when it becomes available.

fmah · Post by **fmah** » Thu May 29, 2003 6:26 pm

Someone has beat me to it apparently. Well, should be interesting. I'm guessing the price around $300+.

DryFire · Post by **DryFire** » Thu May 29, 2003 6:57 pm

the case looks like one giant heatsink too me.

also 120mm fans are a bit large. they don't give allot of static pressure when directly cooling and can be loud to some people. Many people see 92 m or 80mm the best comprimise.

johnoh · Post by **johnoh** » Thu May 29, 2003 7:33 pm

Be funny if it is $300 and then they also come out with a copper one for $600. Somehow I think there would be a few takers here.

fmah · Post by **fmah** » Thu May 29, 2003 9:22 pm

Actually it's probably going to be more than $300. It really needs to look better though. The Nisvara PCs are going for $3000, though it is a full system.

al bundy · Post by **al bundy** » Thu May 29, 2003 10:58 pm

KenAF wrote:Directron has posted the following upcoming product to their web site. They claim the entire case is one giant heatsink; it uses copper heatpipes to transfer the heat from the chipset, graphics and cpu to the case. It also has a fanless power supply. They claim it will cool a P4 3.06.

Very interesting looking product - thanks for posting this KenAF!

SometimesWarrior · Post by **SometimesWarrior** » Thu May 29, 2003 11:44 pm

The Zalman-designed power supply "Has high power density, a long life-span (over 60,000 hours), and an impressive 80% AC/DC converting efficiency (10% higher than the standard 70% provided by most power supplies)." That would mean the PSU generated 1/3rd less heat, right?

Does that 80% effeciency claim sound reasonable? If so, I wonder how long it will be until this high-efficiency technology trickles down to the standard consumer PSU's... this would be the first real technology advancement towards quiet power supplies, since, as Rusty pointed out in the Digitalix thread, a simple fan swap (the current silencing technique for retail quiet-PSU's) isn't exactly high-tech.

halcyon · Post by **halcyon** » Thu May 29, 2003 11:49 pm

Finally!

I've been talking about this for years with my friends. It all started with the Swedish heatsink ATX case prototypes on the web (sorry, can't find the URL, it was at least 3-4 years ago I think).

The heatpipe addition is a logical and great one.

I hope there will be more information soon. This is *very* interesting.

This would be a great item to be reviewed by Mike or somebody else here at Silent PC.

regards,
Halcyon

johnoh · Post by **johnoh** » Fri May 30, 2003 7:04 am

Someone should send them a link to our "how much would you pay for a silent system" thread. Give their pricing guy some good data points to think about.

johnoh · Post by **johnoh** » Fri May 30, 2003 7:16 am

Does anyone have any theories or data as to what sort of cpu temps this thing would produce?

What is semi-permanent life cycle?

In a related story, Panaflo is about to enter the ceiling fan business. Can't wait to see the thread "I've undervolted my 110V ac outlet and now my ceiling fan runs at 200rpm instead of 300, although the surface of my case has gone up 2c as a result. Oh well." (j/k)

chiahaochang · Post by **chiahaochang** » Fri May 30, 2003 9:41 am

KenAF wrote:Directron has posted the following upcoming product to their web site. They claim the entire case is one giant heatsink; it uses copper heatpipes to transfer the heat from the chipset, graphics and cpu to the case. It also has a fanless power supply. They claim it will cool a P4 3.06.

Thanks for the pointer. Looks interesting. I may "have to" pick one up if I hear it works well.

I'm sure it's going to cost a pretty penny though.

Yomat · Post by **Yomat** » Fri May 30, 2003 9:59 am

Of course startup development and production of this kind of product will make the cost enormous per unit. But think of it. The technology isnt _that_ advanced. They said the pipes consisted of copper and water. I dont know the exact internal workings of the pipes but I assume its a tube, fluid and a wick made of mesh alu or cu. Perhaps there is a patent issue that comes into play.

I mean.. how much doesent a case cost with _conventional_ cooling?
You need fans, you need heatsinks for all items including the PSU nowadays. Even the cheapest CPU HSFs is a substantial part of budget CPUs these days. The conventional way is cheaper just because it is 'within supply-demand' or whatever economists call it (Of course this is all that matters but we can dream that it wouldent matter, right?

). If you would need to build fans from scratch the heatpipe variant would probably be alot cheaper.

Only real problems I see that the mountings dont fit on all boards. And if a pipe breaks it could be tough to fix. But they can always sacrifice some efficiency for flexibility.

fmah · Post by **fmah** » Fri May 30, 2003 7:36 pm

johnoh wrote:Does anyone have any theories or data as to what sort of cpu temps this thing would produce?

Probably around 30 deg C above ambient. Somewhere in that range. I did some calcs previously to figure out this since I'm doing tests on this type of configuration. The natural convection thermal resistance of a suitable sized heatsink would be around 0.2-0.3 °C/W for a 24" long piece of about 14" width or so. So in their picture the dimensions look bigger then that. So if you are dissipating 100W, then at a resistance of 0.25 your temperature difference is 25 °C, so if you have an ambient temp of 25°C your CPU temp is around 50°C. This is approximate though, and doesn't take into account the other heat loads, but if you can have something with less than 40°C difference then it will work.

Harry Azol · Post by **Harry Azol** » Sat May 31, 2003 9:23 am

johnoh wrote:What is semi-permanent life cycle?

My guess is that since there are no fans (which have a limited life), it will have a very long life cycle, but I suspect that they can't call it permanent because the electronics could still fail?

fmah · Post by **fmah** » Sat May 31, 2003 3:03 pm

The power supply looks evolutionary, which is a good thing. All current units are designed to be a circuit board with heatsinks added afterward, but integrating the PCB onto the heatsink is going to be better for cooling. So this is good to see.

msmrodan · Post by **msmrodan** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 11:06 am

look at dis:
http://www.deltatronic.info/index.html

Theyre doing the same heatsink-case stuff with heatpipe.
looks totally pro and they've been selling this for quite a while..

Yomat · Post by **Yomat** » Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:48 am

Itz ze funky germanz. Good at technology. Bad at marketing.

That heatpipe kit was kind of neat. If you could buy one of those one could rather easily install it in your own Alu case. Just drill a couple of holes and apply. The future looks silent.

I dont understand, however, why the previous case would need that much more advanced solution than this german one.

fmah · Post by **fmah** » Tue Jun 03, 2003 7:24 pm

Yeah, I've seen that German site. I think it was linked here somewhere. It's just available in US. Although I've wondered how they do the GPU heatpipe. The position of the GPU on the card is not always the same (is it?). The heat pipes are rigid.

I mean it is not availabe in the US.

Rod M · Post by **Rod M** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 3:58 am

does anyone know who is the manufacturer???

Yomat · Post by **Yomat** » Sat Jun 07, 2003 10:49 pm

fmah: I think they make the pipes mobo model specific. The point is to buy the whole machine from them, with the heatpipe solution. Then they have a selection of motherboards they can use. The price isnt that bad either. Like 1900 Euro for a decent machine.

Rod M: I think it is that company who makes it "Deltatronic". Germany seems to have nice programs to start up scientifically interesting small companies like that. There doesent have to be a large industry behind.

halcyon · Post by **halcyon** » Sun Jun 29, 2003 10:12 pm

Any new updates on the Directron sold (or soon to be for sale) unit?

I have read several reviews of the Deltatronic unit and to me it looks like they are using a heat pipe for the CPU that spreads most of the heat to the case (typical Antec/Chieftec clone). However, modifying this heat pipe to fit other motherboards has not been successful at least when done by 3rd parties (i.e. not Deltatronic).

I'd rather not buy a case that becomes obsolete with a motherboard/cpu cycle of 18 months. It needs to be reusable and upgradable. The world is already plentiful with landfill as it is

regards,
Halcyon

cliche · Post by **cliche** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 1:56 pm

marc999 wrote:
Sometimes I wonder if I am single handedly supporting the whole worldwide economy with the money I spend on quiet PC stuff !! If I ever stop I bet the whole world will go into recession !!

I feel the same here. I don't dare to think how much £££ I have spent here neither

Wrah · Post by **Wrah** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 2:30 pm

That case looks a lot like this appearantly new upcoming Zalman case, the TNN 500A, passively cooling a P4 and a gfx card.

Batistuta · Post by **Batistuta** » Mon Jul 14, 2003 1:53 pm

Have to agree with Marc & Cliche on the ££$$€€ burnt on this "silent" hunt...

As for the Deltatronic case - a barebone solution with GF4/Radeon cooling, is > 850 €

http://content.guru3d.com/news.php#166 claims the Zalman to be 1100-1200 €

http://o.v.e.r.clockers.at/showthread.p ... zalman+tnn says 150.000 yen = 1130 €

That's a LOT of money, but let's see what it will retail at...I may even consider it...hell, thinking of previous watercooling solutions, 4 cases (including a 19mm thick wooden DIY and my current LianLi PC6070), different brands of harddrives and now a fanless 200+€ PSU..it may actually be a bargain to settle my noise problems once and for all

I will need to see some serious reviews first though, before I shell out that kinda cash !!!

By the way - the case is apparently not very 'deep'; only 40cm, but quite tall at 60cm. If build quality is good, I find the looks quite okay (and different from what most other people have, for sure).

B.

CoolColJ · Post by **CoolColJ** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 4:42 am

Hmm maybe I'll put off my new PC purchase until this comes out..

I'm willing to spend big for somthing like this!!!

no fans, no noise, no wear and tear!

Seen this yet? fanless "heatsink" pc case + psu

Seen this yet? fanless "heatsink" pc case + psu

Re: Have you seen this: Fanless "heatsink" compute

Re: Have you seen this: Fanless "heatsink" compute