H2Ceramic cooling (also called H2C or Hot-to-Cold) is a computer cooling product offered as an option in Dell's XPS gaming systems, advertised specifically as facilitating CPUoverclocking. H2C is a two-stage Liquid/Thermoelectric (TEC) hybrid cooling system that combines a liquid-to-air heat exchanger (much like a liquid radiator), a thermoelectric fluid chiller, and control circuitry to optimize CPU cooling with minimal power.
Computer cooling is required to remove the waste heat produced by computer components, to keep components within permissible operating temperature limits. Components that are susceptible to temporary malfunction or permanent failure if overheated include integrated circuits such as central processing units (CPUs), chipset, graphics cards, and hard disk drives.
Dell is a US multinational computer technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Named after its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest technological corporations in the world, employing more than 145,000 people in the U.S. and around the world.
Dell XPS is a line of high performance computers manufactured by Dell.
The components are delivered as a single unit designed to last a minimum of 5 years without service or liquid refilling. The XPS 710 H2C and Dell XPS 720 H2C featured a design where all components were mounted in a single plastic chassis and which only cooled the CPU. This design only matched motherboards with a very specific CPU socket location and was later replaced by a new and more flexible design featuring a separate pump unit which made it much easier to fit a broader range of motherboards with different CPU socket locations. The new design allowed the unit to cool the motherboard chipset as well.
Components
The front of the unit (facing the front of the PC case) has a 120mm Radiator which is the primary heat exchanger. It is cooled by a fan. After passing the radiator, the cooling liquid moves through a thermoelectric fluid chiller consisting of a liquid cooling block with two Peltier plates. The pump includes an integrated reservoir and spring-loaded floor, to keep the unit pressurized while still allowing small amounts of liquid to bleed out over time.
Radiators are heat exchangers used to transfer thermal energy from one medium to another for the purpose of cooling and heating. The majority of radiators are constructed to function in automobiles, buildings, and electronics. The radiator is always a source of heat to its environment, although this may be for either the purpose of heating this environment, or for cooling the fluid or coolant supplied to it, as for engine cooling. Despite the name, most radiators transfer the bulk of their heat via convection instead of thermal radiation.
A heat exchanger is a system used to transfer heat between two or more fluids. Heat exchangers are used in both cooling and heating processes. The fluids may be separated by a solid wall to prevent mixing or they may be in direct contact. They are widely used in space heating, refrigeration, air conditioning, power stations, chemical plants, petrochemical plants, petroleum refineries, natural-gas processing, and sewage treatment. The classic example of a heat exchanger is found in an internal combustion engine in which a circulating fluid known as engine coolant flows through radiator coils and air flows past the coils, which cools the coolant and heats the incoming air. Another example is the heat sink, which is a passive heat exchanger that transfers the heat generated by an electronic or a mechanical device to a fluid medium, often air or a liquid coolant.
Thermoelectric cooling uses the Peltier effect to create a heat flux at the junction of two different types of materials. A Peltier cooler, heater, or thermoelectric heat pump is a solid-state active heat pump which transfers heat from one side of the device to the other, with consumption of electrical energy, depending on the direction of the current. Such an instrument is also called a Peltier device, Peltier heat pump, solid state refrigerator, or thermoelectric cooler (TEC). It can be used either for heating or for cooling, although in practice the main application is cooling. It can also be used as a temperature controller that either heats or cools.
The first version of the H2C cooled the CPU only. Later versions cooled both the chipset and CPU using a design with automotive rubber tubing to allow greater flexibility in the placement of the cooling plates.
Pump, fan and TEC control
Rather than having the control mechanism integrated into the H2C unit, the pump, fans and TEC are controlled separately by a Dell daughterboard, the Master Control Board (MCB). The MCB uses Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA) to monitor and control the pump, fans and TEC (in addition to controlling the XPS LED lights, other fans, and sensors). To avoid condensation the MCB firmware limits the use of the TECs and turns them on only when the CPU is under heavy load. The TECs are turned off when the CPU is idle or when the CPU temperature is the same as the ambient temperature (measured by the MCB).
The Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA) specification is a royalty-free protocol for two-way communication of PC components. Announced in 2007, ESA is used for monitoring temperature of computer hardware components such as the computer case and power supply unit. The first and last official release of the ESA specification is version 1.0, released in 2007. The ESA USB specification was created by a joint venture between Microsoft, Nvidia, Logitech and several other companies. The protocol remains open and royalty-free; but, no manufacturers are currently utilizing its specification at this time. The last known devices to utilize the ESA specifications were the Dell XPS 730x and Alienware Area-51 ALX computer systems that utilized the ESA specification to control its fans, LEDs, and motorized doors as well as the monitoring of available Water cooling systems such as the Dell XPS 730x's Dell H2Ceramic Cooling System.
Condensation is the change of the physical state of matter from the gas phase into the liquid phase, and is the reverse of vaporization. The word most often refers to the water cycle. It can also be defined as the change in the state of water vapor to liquid water when in contact with a liquid or solid surface or cloud condensation nuclei within the atmosphere. When the transition happens from the gaseous phase into the solid phase directly, the change is called deposition. Condensation is a process by which a substance changes from a gaseous state to a liquid state. As a gas cools, it loses heat, or thermal energy. The particles that make up the gas move more slowly; that allows the attractive forces among them to increase, causing droplets of liquid to form. The steps in this process are the opposite of what occurs in evaporation, the formation of a gas from a liquid.
The H2C system cannot be reused in another computer case without the MCB or custom-made control circuits to take its place.
Performance
According to Dell, the cooling efficiency of H2C contributes to PC systems that are cooler in over-clocked mode and potentially quieter in normal operating mode. By cooling the CPU below what is possible with traditional forced-air convection or water cooling systems, but preventing the temperature from falling below ambient room temperature, H2C is advertised as extending CPU life while eliminating the risk of humidity condensation.
Convection is the heat transfer due to the bulk movement of molecules within fluids such as gases and liquids, including molten rock (rheid). Convection includes sub-mechanisms of advection, and diffusion.
Water cooling is a method of heat removal from components and industrial equipment. Water may be a more efficient heat transfer fluid where air cooling is ineffective. In most occupied climates water offers the thermal conductivity advantages of a liquid with unusually high specific heat capacity and the option of evaporative cooling. Low cost often allows rejection as waste after a single use, but recycling coolant loops may be pressurized to eliminate evaporative loss and offer greater portability and improved cleanliness. Unpressurized recycling coolant loops using evaporative cooling require a blowdown waste stream to remove impurities concentrated by evaporation. Disadvantages of water cooling systems include accelerated corrosion and maintenance requirements to prevent heat transfer reductions from biofouling or scale formation. Chemical additives to reduce these disadvantages may introduce toxicity to wastewater. Water cooling is commonly used for cooling automobile internal combustion engines and large industrial facilities such as nuclear and steam electric power plants, hydroelectric generators, petroleum refineries and chemical plants. Other uses include cooling the barrels of machine guns, cooling of lubricant oil in pumps; for cooling purposes in heat exchangers; cooling products from tanks or columns; for cooling in HVAC in chillers, and recently, cooling of various major components inside high-end personal computers such as CPUs, GPUs, and motherboards. The main mechanism for water cooling is convective heat transfer.
Colloquially, room temperature is the range of air temperatures that most people prefer for indoor settings, which feel comfortable when wearing typical indoor clothing. Human comfort can extend beyond this range depending on humidity, air circulation and other factors. In certain fields, like science and engineering, and within a particular context, room temperature can mean different agreed-on ranges. In contrast, ambient temperature is the actual temperature of the air in any particular place, as measured by a thermometer. It may be very different from usual room temperature, for example an unheated room in winter.
While Dell continues to offer liquid cooling in their Alienware gaming computers, they have discontinued use of the H2C technology with the XPS 730X being the last model to utilize it. Liquid cooled Alienware computers are not equipped with TECs and do not require a daughterboard (MCB) for the cooling system.
Alienware is an American computer hardware subsidiary of Dell. Their products are designed for gaming and can be identified by their alien-themed designs. Alienware was founded in 1996 by Nelson Gonzalez and Alex Aguila. The company's corporate headquarters is located in The Hammocks, in Miami, Florida.
The Dell XPS 730x is an eXtreme Performance System for gaming and high-performance computing released November 16, 2008 and ended life in August 2009. The XPS 730 series was unique in that they had user-serviceable non-proprietary standard ATX-size computer components that allowed the user to upgrade the components through an Exchange Program.
A motherboard is the main printed circuit board (PCB) found in general purpose computers and other expandable systems. It holds, and allows, communication between many of the crucial electronic components of a system, such as the central processing unit (CPU) and memory, and provides connectors for other peripherals. Unlike a backplane, a motherboard usually contains significant sub-systems such as the central processor, the chipset's input/output and memory controllers, interface connectors, and other components integrated for general purpose use and applications.
In computing, the expansion card, expansion board, adapter card or accessory card is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot, on a computer motherboard, backplane or riser card to add functionality to a computer system via the expansion bus.
In computing, overclocking is the practice of increasing the clock rate of a computer to exceed that certified by the manufacturer. Commonly operating voltage is also increased to maintain a component's operational stability at accelerated speeds. Semiconductor devices operated at higher frequencies and voltages increase power consumption and heat. An overclocked device may be unreliable or fail completely if the additional heat load is not removed or power delivery components cannot meet increased power demands. Many device warranties state that overclocking and/or over-specification voids any warranty.
A quiet PC is a personal computer that makes very little, or no noise. Common uses for quiet PCs include video editing, sound mixing and home theater PCs, but noise reduction techniques can also be used to greatly reduce the noise from servers. There is currently no standard definition for a "quiet PC", and the term is generally not used in a business context, but by individuals and the businesses catering to them.
Zalman Tech Co. is a South Korean company that develops and provides aftermarket desktop computer products with primary focus on cooling enhancement.
A chiller is a machine that removes heat from a liquid via a vapor-compression or absorption refrigeration cycle. This liquid can then be circulated through a heat exchanger to cool equipment, or another process stream. As a necessary by-product, refrigeration creates waste heat that must be exhausted to ambience, or for greater efficiency, recovered for heating purposes.
A water block is the watercooling equivalent of a heatsink. It can be used on many different computer components, including the central processing unit (CPU), GPU, PPU, and Northbridge chipset on the motherboard. It consists of at least two main parts; the "base", which is the area that makes contact with the device being cooled and is usually manufactured from metals with high thermal conductivity such as aluminum or copper. The second part, the "top" ensures the water is contained safely inside the water block and has connections that allow hosing to connect it with the water cooling loop. The top can be made of the same metal as the base, transparent Perspex, Delrin, Nylon, or HDPE. Most newer high-end water blocks also contain mid-plates which serve to add jet tubes, nozzles, and other flow altering devices.
Thermosiphon is a method of passive heat exchange, based on natural convection, which circulates a fluid without the necessity of a mechanical pump. Thermosiphoning is used for circulation of liquids and volatile gases in heating and cooling applications such as heat pumps, water heaters, boilers and furnaces. Thermosiphoning also occurs across air temperature gradients such as those utilized in a wood fire chimney or solar chimney.
A computer fan is any fan inside, or attached to, a computer case used for active cooling. Fans are used to draw cooler air into the case from the outside, expel warm air from inside and move air across a heat sink to cool a particular component. Both axial and sometimes centrifugal (blower/squirrel-cage) fans are used in computers. Computer fans commonly come in standard sizes, and are powered and controlled using 3-pin or 4-pin fan connectors.
Solar air conditioning refers to any air conditioning (cooling) system that uses solar power.
Radiators are heat exchangers used for cooling internal combustion engines, mainly in automobiles but also in piston-engined aircraft, railway locomotives, motorcycles, stationary generating plant or any similar use of such an engine.
Asetek is a Danish company that designs, develops and markets a liquid cooling solution for computers across the world. The company has two segments - the desktop segment and the data center segment. Asetek was founded in 1997 and is based in Aalborg, Denmark. The company is known for supplying desktop water coolers for companies like Corsair and NZXT. It been credited for "taking liquid cooling mainstream".
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