An Update on Computer Cooling

When last you heard about the Self-Contained Submersion Cooling project, it was a fantasy existing only in my own mind. Now two months into the class, team leader Joshua Nixon and members Aaron Batker Pritzker, Alex Gailor, John Howe, and George Kaplan are making that dream a reality. With two main objectives in mind, to minimize turbulence in the flowing liquid and to maximize the area of contact between the processor and coolant, we created two sketches of possible base designs. We used information on the physics of fluid flow, obtained from textbooks, high school teachers, and a professor from Harvey Mudd College, to create a model in Inventor. This model, pictured below, is a basic template for a system that will accept standardized input and output tubes, fit over all modern processor heat spreaders, and guide liquid with minimal turbulence. Several dimensions including tube diameters, overall part length and widths, and the angle at which the tubes enter the block were left flexible to accommodate changes in the design.

In addition, we have a design for a system to mount the block onto a computer's motherboard and a gasket to prevent leakage underway. The next step in our design process is to generate a list of parts to purchase for a complete system, such as tubes, a pump, a radiator, and coolant. Our team has split into smaller groups to research these challenges in parallel, and we look forward to prototyping and testing our designs in the months ahead.