Hitachi has created a water-cooled notebook PC, a 1.8GHz mobile
Pentium 4-based machine that uses a patented Hitachi system to aid
heat dissipation.
Most notebooks are cooled by air fans and, as processors have grown
more powerful and begun to generate more heat, these fans have
become more numerous, larger, faster and, of course, noisier.
The Flora 270W Silent Model uses a water-based solution tank
instead of a fan or fans for cooling down the processor. Hitachi
announced a working prototype using this technology in February.
"The efficiency of a water-cooling system and the air-cooling
system are about the same, but the biggest difference is the noise
the latter creates," said Masayuki Akabane, a Hitachi spokesman.
The water-based solution runs through a flexible tube that is
placed over the chips and absorbs heat. The heated water solution
is then sent to the display part of the notebook to be stored in a
tank where it cools down.
The solution can last for more than five years, the flexible tube
can circulate the solution more than 20,000 times and the pump
works for more than 44,000 hours, Hitachi claimed.
Plastic panels separate these water-cooling elements from
high-voltage areas, in case of a solution leak from the cooling
system. The product is guaranteed for three years.
The 270W is slightly thicker than existing air-cooled Flora models
to show the tank at the back of the liquid crystal display panel
and hence differentiate the water-cooled machine, Akabane said. The
tank also be hidden.
The products are equipped with a 1.8GHz mobile Intel 4 processor,
128Mbytes of RAM, a 20Gbyte hard disk drive and a 37.5cm colour
thin film transistor LCD, and are priced at ¥341,000 (£1,870). The
products can be customised to connect via Ethernet, a modem or an
IEEE802.11b interface.
Hitachi started taking custom orders from corporate customers at
its online shopping site yesterday. The products are expected to
ship on 30 September in Japan. The company can provide the product
for corporate users outside Japan on demand, he said.
The company is still looking at market trends before deciding when
it will launch the product on the consumer market.
Several high-end product makers are in talks with Hitachi for
possible adoption of the water-cooling technology in servers and
PDPs (plasma display panels).