"The Heat Pipes are coming"... The Heat Pipes are


What is a Heat Pipe? and why you should care. A Heat Pipe( hp from hear on out)is a heat transfer mechanism that combines the principles of both thermal conductivity and phase transition to efficiently manage the transfer heat between two solid interfaces. And why should you in Audio-land care. In short the Heat Pipes (hp) transfers heat from audio equipment and audio listening rooms to make them both sound better. That's a bold statement for sure. But before you boil over and get ready to blast my post, remember there is Heat Pipe (hp) in the very computer or Laptop you are on right now. It's keeping everything in your computer cool inside so it can work as efficiently as possible. A hp contains no mechanical moving parts, and typically require no maintenance. The hp's are PASSIVE devices that are place on top of equipment and placed in your listening room. In short my dedicated listening room with sound reinforcement, diffusers, dedicated lines, and all kinds of isolation devices for my equipment. I Have never addressed the heat coming from my equipment. Since I have all solid state gear, I never thought it was necessary. But when I started putting the hp's on top of my amps near the transformer. There was a noticeable improvement. Then I did the same with my preamp near the power supply the same improvement. Then I put one on all 4 of my players, SACD,DVD-AUDIO,CD, CD 5-DISC players I was sold. The cherry on top was when I put the extra hp's around my listening room. IMPORTANT: I did not have to remove one piece of sound reinforcement when I introduce the hp's in the environment. They just make what's there work better. They look like Aluminum heat sinks with two copper tube coming out of them. I do have one that has 4 copper tubes in it, and looks to be all copper heat sinks included. I even have some that do not have any copper tubes at all , just all aluminium. The ones with the copper tube are better than the all aluminum ones everywhere I compared them at, which was everywhere. So let that Heat Pipe (hp) in your computer go to work and give me your feed back if you think like me that the "Heat Pipes are coming"... "The Heat Pipes are coming".
jejaudio
Heat pipes are one of several technologies that may be used in computers to cool two specific integrated circuit chips, the CPU chip and the "Northbridge" chip (or equivalent). Those devices consume enormous amounts of power relative to their small size, and would be quickly destroyed without adequate cooling. Also, marginal cooling would limit the speed at which they can operate reliably.

The heat pipes, or other cooling means, are in intimate contact with the two devices, under pressure, and with a thermally conductive paste in between, to fill in microscopic voids that would degrade heat transfer.

The applicability of any of that to a device placed on top of an audio component would seem to be, um, questionable.

Regards,
-- Al
Hi, Thanks to all the 82 and counting who have read this unreadable thread. Let's not let the imperfect stop us from focusing on the substance of my post. That these Heat Pipes work in a way that is unexpected and usual. Please do a Bing or Google search. There are books on Amazon about Heat Pipes and there use. To 4est... I am just giving you my findings. The reasons for them working so well as passive heat transfer units is another story. I'm learning as I go. To Rlwainwright: Thank you for your critic of my post. I just hope most members will slog-Thu and get the point. Your thoughts on the subject matter are always welcomed.
To Almarg: Nice spacing on your post. The conductive paste that you mentioned was on all the Heat Pipes that I have. It made no difference in sound in my system when I removed the paste with Denatured Alcohol. Another strange finding is that the Heat Pipes on Power amps sound better with the fins down on top of the transformer. But with all 4 digital players it works best with the base on top of the unit (conductive paste removed).
A class'a' amp which is designed with heatpipes in mind from the blank sheet of paper phase will be a much nicer animal.
Moving the heat into the room from the gear and doing so more efficiently and without noise is a good thing.

I'm working on a design of a sealed enclosure with heat transfer to help keep equipment cooler and dust free.
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