As processor technology evolves, the aftermarket responds with more advanced products to keep pace with the ever-increasing heat these newer processors generate. Air-cooling is by far the most user friendly and cost effective solution and the PC enthusiast has a wide range of products to choose from in this arena. Over the past few years, we've seen quite a change in the way manufacturers use existing materials and technology in innovative ways to make better cooling solutions. The use of heatpipes, for instance, was a pretty radical departure from traditional cooling but is quite commonplace today. Spire is a company that has been in this game for 15 years or so, and we're going to take a look at one of their newer offerings in this review. The VertiCool II cooler makes use of copper and aluminum as well as a couple of heatpipes to move heat away from the processor. Let's see how it performs.
SPIRE CORPORATE PROFILE
Founded in 1991, Spire is the premier brand for computer thermal solutions. In order to meet the needs of the global market, we have established the production facilities in China, our corporate office in the USA and overseas branches in The Netherlands, U.K., Germany, France, Taiwan, Japan and Brazil. All are strategically located to better work with the customers we serve. Our focus is to build on the current success of the Spire brand so that our brand is recognized world wide as a provider of top quality cooling solutions. We will continue to work to maintain the satisfaction of our customers and share the knowledge of our experts to provide our customer's with 'The perfect cooling solution'.
SMALL HEATPIPE TECHNOLOGY TUTORIAL
I am going to keep this as simple as possible to get the basic premise across to all of the Tweaknews readers. Please don't be insulted if this is too simple for your education level. I have to cater my writing to the least technical reader looking for information.
The basic idea behind heatpipe technology if really simple.
1.) With a tube containing a compressed fluid/gas, the fluid comes in contact with the heat source (aka cpu core) which heats up the volatile fluid and turn it to a gas. The energy is absorbed in the gas production process and is ready for transportation.
2.) The heated gas now travels along the inner portion of the tube where it comes to the cooling portion of the heatsink in this case example.
3.) The radiator, with or without a fan, will cool the liquid and transfer the energy (AKA heat) to the radiator to be dispersed to the surrounding air. With the heat removed, the vapor quickly condenses back to a fluid and runs along the inside surface of the pipe back down to the bottom where the process can be started all over again.
For another example, you can consider a boiling pot of water with a glass lid as a very very basic heatpipe. When the water boils, the water vapor comes in contact with the cooler glass pot lid which forces the vapor to condense back to water where is dribbles back down the inside of the lid back into the pot.
