Apple Hints At Future Liquid-Cooled Laptops

Lumenary7204 writes "According to the Register, Apple recently received US Patent Application No. 20080291629 for a 'liquid-cooled portable computer.' The filing describes a system where a 'pump ... coupled to the heat pipe is configured to circulate the liquid coolant through the heat pipe.' All claims of obviousness aside (after all, PC enthusiasts have been using liquid and phase-change cooling for years), the existence of the patent application seems to indicate that laptop manufacturers are in agreement with physicists and engineers who say we are running up against the practical limits of air-cooling such compact pieces of equipment."

This won't fly.

Literally, it won't fly. Getting one on an plane would be impossible anywhere in north America.

Re:This won't fly.

TSA has already announced that they are relaxing the no liquids rule.

Re:This won't fly.

"Sir, you are required to remove the cooling liquid from the computer, put it into this container, which we'll put into this sealed bag. After landing you are free to put it back."

Re:This won't fly.

Apple will build a user-accessible liquid coolant tank and will sell small bottles with coolant of different colours and scents. Even printer ink manufacturers will be jealous of the margins :)

Re:This won't fly.

It`s sad, but I think this should probably be modded informative rather than funny.

Re:This won't fly.

They've had it on Mac Pros for years.
What could possibly go wrong?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1464395&tstart=990 [apple.com]

It's another built-in-defect waiting to happen, along with the dodgy Nvidia GPUs in Macbook Pros, those heat-deaths of HDDs in Macbooks etc...

Re:This won't fly.

You hit the nail on the head. Everybody has, at one point or another, experienced liquid leaking from their water heater, or air conditioner, or car radiator. It creates a mess, an expensive repair, and a shorter operational lifespan versus an air-cooled device. ("My g5 liquid cooled computer...is leaking and dripped onto my power supply. I am looking at a little under a thousand dollars for repair...with less than 2 years of actual use.")

I'd much prefer choosing the air-cooled PC with no moving parts (except a fan), even if that means I only run at 3000 megahertz instead of 6000. All I do is surf the net or stream Heroes off nbc.com, and I'm happy to take a slightly slower "engine" inside my computer (just as my Honda Insight only has 67hp). I don't need a lot of power for my daily routine and neither do most people.

Re:This won't fly.

Well the person I quoted in my post only had his computer for 3 years, as have many other PowerMac owners, and it already started leaking in just that short timespan, so your attempt to dismiss the problem so casually is an epic fail.

As for my avoidance of constant upgrades:

My Commodore 64 is over twenty years old, one of my laptops is about ten years, my second laptop is five, and my desktop PC is also five. If any of them were liquid-cooled, they'd likely be dead by now due to fluid leakage. Liquid cooling shortens lifespans faster than air cooling. Why do I keep things so long? One reason is because there are those of us who were not born with a silverspoon in our mouths, and therefore we have to economize and make things last rather than upgrade every other year.

The second reason is the same reason why I drive a 67 horsepower car; I don't need a pocket rocket either to get to work, or to surf the net. I don't buy into the whole "conspicuous consumption" idea that many Americans (including yourself) like to embrace. I think it's foolish and a waste and the key reason why our economy is hovering on the brink of a second Depression. You casually dismiss this as "fearmongering" but I call it intelligent budgeting. I'm proud to say that I have no debt; can you say the same?

Re:This won't fly.

will the liquid make a mess as it leaks out?

Wrong question.

Will it blend?

Re:This won't fly.

'Hit' the ground??? This is an Apple laptop; the reality distortion field will morph the pavement as it descends.

Re:This won't fly.

No more mess than the liquid that will leak out of you if you hit the ground when flying.

Re:Well

no, it's a safety device. the leaking liquid will extinguish the fire caused by the cracked battery. Brilliant!

Oh my!

"pump ... coupled to the heat pipe is configured to circulate the liquid coolant through the heat pipe."

Why does it seem like that should be followed by 'and shipped to your door in plain, discreet packaging'?

Liquid Nitrogen

While liquid cooling may be a better solution than air for laptops, there are studies that show that the energy used to pump the liquid and cool it is greater by a 10x magnitude relative to air systems.

The university of Chalmers in Sweden has been experimenting with liquid Nitrogen for some time now and their solution (while not cheap) is extremely effective for cooling of small electronic devices. Give it some time and I'm sure this will made it into mainstream (and Abble may very possibly claim that they invented the thing as well).

Re:Liquid Nitrogen

The university of Chalmers in Sweden has been experimenting with liquid Nitrogen for some time now and their solution (while not cheap) is extremely effective for cooling of small electronic devices. Give it some time and I'm sure this will made it into mainstream (and Abble may very possibly claim that they invented the thing as well).

I doubt it - that sounds like a miniture cryobomb to me. Depressurising liquid nitrogen (i.e. exposed to air) cools very, very fast, so if the device was ruptured it could cause some very nasty cold burns. This might be applicable in some limited circumstances, but the risk of costly litigation is too high for the general consumer market.

Re:Liquid Nitrogen

This is generally liquid gel cooling, where the liquid has high thermal conductivity. The pump needn't be all that powerful. There are pumpless systems that use liquid CFCs, but (a) they use CFCs (chemically harmless, but nassssty to dispose of given ozone concerns) (b) the CFCs cost a fortune. The main problem will be the requirement of perfect sealing.

aren't we beyond the limits of air cooling?

my father has got one of those huge 19" laptops with a 3ghz+ pentium 4 processor and geforce 5xxx graphic chipset
unless we put something under it so there is some room between the laptop and the table, it completely overheats as soon as i stress it (a simple game that a pc like that hsould easily handle. Diablo 2 or so) -_-. even with some room under it, it only takes a few minutes for it to get seriously hot (you can actually feel from the outside of the laptop where the hot spots are)

i wonder what ever made them create such stupid laptops (and what made my father buy one -_-)

Battery Usage?

I would be interested to see the energy difference between a laptop with a fan versus water cooling. I know that the specs haven't been released yet, but it seems like pumping water around would eat up the battery.
I have a HP laptop which runs fairly hot, but that's still better, as far as I'm concerned, than carrying around a heavy pump that uses up the battery.

Of course, if they manage to make it more compact and energy efficient than fans, all the power to them. I would still worry about it leaking and destroying my laptop, though.

Since Apple is trying for a patent for all types of mobile devices on this, it would be particularly interesting to see a water cooled iPhone...

Re:Battery Usage?

Since Apple is trying for a patent for all types of mobile devices on this, it would be particularly interesting to see a water cooled iPhone...

Water cooled iPhones? I call prior art [google.com]!

prior art?

doesn't Hitachi's watercooled laptop [geek.com] from a few years ago count as "prior art"?

I don't think they necessarily "agree"

ORLY patents serve only two purposes: One being that you have to pay through the nose if you want to do what is the obvious next step in development. And today it seems the logical next step in cooling for mobiles is liquid (as it has been for non mobile computers for, I don't know, a few decades?).

The other purpose is to simply leave your competition behind because they must not use what you patented.

So, of course, Apple is the good guy here, because they force the developers of laptops to come up with new, inspired ideas because they blocked the path of the most obvious one?

No, wait, ain't it usually MS blocking paths and Apple coming up with something fancy? I'm confused here...

Apple is a corporation.

Apple is a corporation. Corporations are by law required to be psychopathic money-hungry bastards (that's what the SEC regulations for public companies amount to). Don't attribute human emotions and motivations to corporations... corporations reflect ANY human attributes only in spite of what they are.

Setting that aside, the third reason for a patent is to provide defensive ammunition against the OTHER psychopathic money-hungry bastards that might use THEIR patent against you.

Wrong Direction

With the rise of netbooks, I think the laptop market is moving more towards smaller and more efficient, rather than big and powerful. I'd much rather see an ultra-portable Apple laptop that needs _no_ cooling assistance and gets 12-18 hours on a basic battery (so I can leave the power brick at home!) than another high-wattage crotch burner in the marketplace.

Re:Water?

Ah yes, liquid ice. Why has no-one thought of that before?

Re:A note on semantics

After reading the specification, it sure sounds to me like a description of a prototype product on which Apple is trying to get patent protection. Some of the specifics in the specification are just too, well, specific -- for example, the description in [0034] of the use of a Venturi tube, or the parenthetical comment in [0035] about the use of ultrasonic frequencies in the membrane pump.

Possibly the biggest detail, though -- and the one bit of novelty I think I see in the specification that could form the basis of an allowable patent claim -- is the comment in [0041] that the heat may be coupled to the outside world by a plate behind the display. This is exactly the kind of novelty nugget -- assuming it really is novel -- to which I referred in my earlier comment. One way Apple could get an allowance on this application, after the initial rejection by the examiner, is to include this feature in an independent claim; the invention would then be a liquid-cooled laptop with the heat exchanger behind the display. (Of course, in that case your liquid-cooled laptop that doesn't have the heat exchanger behind the display wouldn't infringe on the resulting patent.)

As I said, assuming that it is a novel feature. PC design is not my specialty. Has anyone seen art before May 22, 2007 -- the filing date of this application -- describing a liquid-cooled laptop with the heat exchanger behind the display?