>> There are some nice new fanless coolers out there. At least one uses 
>> heatpipes and a huge case-radiator (a whole side of the case is the 
>> radiator - no need for fins at that size). Conduction cooling is pretty 
>> much standard in more serious equipment (even in camcorders and dvd 
>> players!). It is not cheap. It can easily add $100 to a machine's cost (pc 
>> level hardware).
>
> Just the sort of thing one is likely to see on a game console?!  I 
> thought that the fancy cooling solutions were somewhat limited in the 
> watts they could get rid of.  A 3.xGHz pentium is nearly 100 watts. 
> And you're talking about TWO of them...  (Luckily, the 1.8GHz 
> Pentium-M run stuff at nearly the same overall speed, and a fraction 
> of the power dissipation.)

I don't know about Centrino but AMD powered laptops do have a heat 
problem (or had one) and they use the heat pipe technology to get rid of 
it. The heat pipe technology is able to move really huge amounts of 
heat. Essentially it boils a liquid on the cpu and the vapor condenses 
on the cooler part. The heat capacity is huge and the hot part will 
never exceed the boiling temperature of the liquid until heat input 
overcomes the capacity of the device.

Hmm, how much *vacuum* is needed to use *water* as refrigerent and boil 
it at ~50C ? (answer: 100mm Hg or about 1/8 at - achievable with a 'van 
Guericke' pump (aka bicycle pump with reversed diaphragm and valve)). 
Plastic tubing has no trouble withstanding 100 mm Hg (I tried this). 
Someone will eventually try this out ;-)

Peter
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