• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.
  • The forums have been upgraded with support for dark mode. By default it will follow the setting on your system/browser. You may override it by scrolling to the end of the page and clicking the gears icon.

4 kg Literal Hunk of Copper Cools a Core i9 Processor

It's a bit like passive cooling. When the copper piece heats up, you may need a fan to dissipate the heat. Space Assembly, again, is more efficient. I think it will heat up faster inside the case. Test for 1-2 hours, I'm sure the processor will throttle.
 
lemonadesoda said:
I agree. This news should not be on TPU, it brings the tone down. What next? Cooking and house cleaning tictok videos? This can't be btarunr posting this but someone logging in as him. This needs taking down and replacing with real content. If btarunr is posting bait content to drive clicks, then TPU is losing it!
Click to expand...
It brought me here, though, appearing in Google Discover. It's hard to argue with the results. And this is literally powering up Copper Age tech!
 
You don't even need to keep it in place. Its frickin heavy on its own!
 
AusWolf said:
You have cheaper and better options to passively dissipate 20 Watts of constant heat *khm (link).
Click to expand...
Sometimes an industrial-looking, sharp-edged, ugly black comb just can't replace a perfectly-shaped, red metal cylinder. It looks like it's there to collect cosmic rays and turn them into electric current.
 
Lame.
 
lightning70 said:
It's a bit like passive cooling. When the copper piece heats up, you may need a fan to dissipate the heat. Space Assembly, again, is more efficient. I think it will heat up faster inside the case. Test for 1-2 hours, I'm sure the processor will throttle.
Click to expand...
Except that there's little to no surface area here to dissipate the heat.
 
The follow up will be be, redditor breaks toes from dropping copper hunk on foot.
 
Hi,
8.8 pounds on a cpu socket :cool:
Think he passed socket max pressure by a lot :laugh:

Board crushed as result.
 
Wirko said:
It's not that bad actually!

Online calculators calculate that about 20 watts can be dissipated by natural convection. An undervolted i9 could do some reasonably useful work at that power, it's in the range of U-series processors. If you keep the rig right under your nose you can improve that to maybe 40 W by just breathing into it.

Just think of potential savings if you build an equally capable PC with a Pentium instead of an i9.

(The parameters I took: height = 200 mm, diameter = 60 mm, hunk temp = 100°C, ambient temp = 20°C, ignoring the effect of motherboard on air flow)


Water would be roughly equally effective if you look at heat capacity per unit volume.
Click to expand...


Thing is, a big cooler isn't as insane as people consider.
The thermal conductivity of copper is 398 W/(m*K).
If we assume the ambient temperature is 20 C
If we assume the processor temperature is 80 C
Delta K = 80-20 = 60
We then have a cylinder, so surface area is 2*PI()*r*h+PI()*r^2 (one cylinder end removed due to interface with the CPU)
If the height is about 4", with the diameter 3" (This is the only way a "chunk" of copper would be 4 kg)
The surface area of the thing should be 2*PI()*1.5*4+PI()*1.5^2 = 44.76 inches square = 0.02888 meters square
Q = conductivity*delta T = 398 W/(m*K) * 60 K = 23880 W/m
0.02888*23880 = 689.65 Watts/material thickness -> gradient in Watts based upon geometry of cooler, with larger thicknesses meaning less conductivity

What? What does that even mean? Well, the amount of energy that we can transfer is least when we have the greatest mass of copper between the cooler and heat source, with the largest mass allowing significantly lower dissipation by virtue of a longer paths to transfer and material heat capacity. This also being balanced by inequality in delta temperatures due to not being at steady state temperature.


All of the above assumes conduction...with the ambient air basically being forced to move due to convection...which is not the same as convection heating. The funny bit is that as the hunk cooler heats up the convection effect would be stronger...but that's enough math to make my head hurt.

Short of it, this is a good cooler. It's also a stupid human trick, because 4 kg of copper is about 8.8 pounds of copper, and at about $22 per pound it's a $176 cooler. About $4 of copper can be constructed into heat pipes and fins, boxed, and sold for $40. You get the same performance by virtue of phase change energy transfer (water) and huge surface area...which is why we don't have solid state coolers in electronics...because if your average motherboard weighed 30 pounds nobody would want one.
 
Vayra86 said:
This is social media level news.

Built to amaze idiots that never left their room or info-bubble.

Note the fact its a 'literal hunk' of copper, too. Literally, like, seriously, dude, woahhh. It just screams bottom barrel US 'language' skills.
Click to expand...
We should consider ourselves lucky,

It came from Reddit, they very easily could've called it a big chungus of copper :cry:
 
Copper is $22 per pound - 44,68 EUR per kg? I looked before, saw numbers at about 8 EUR per kg - but that's the price you get for scrap copper! But I see that it's about 25 EUR per kg here...
 
Vayra86 said:
This is social media level news.

Built to amaze idiots that never left their room or info-bubble.

Note the fact its a 'literal hunk' of copper, too. Literally, like, seriously, dude, woahhh. It just screams bottom barrel US 'language' skills.
Click to expand...
Hi,
Indeed
Guessing they drilled the holes to save weight because 9lbs is way to much :laugh:
 
That's smashing.
Now let's turn this puppy 90 degree..

Also,
So just as any average 4090RTX. Cool.
 
I think its awesome.

Those holes are speed holes :cool:


 
Space Lynx said:
Don't worry baby, that's when it's time for a little fan like mine! I call it Passive* with asterisk. :rockout: :rockout: :rockout: :rockout: :rockout: :rockout:

View attachment 282109
Click to expand...
Pffffff please

heatsinks are for kids
Naked passive. Thanks Mother Nature!!
1EF5C846-A9C2-4F29-B207-FFF8A2576B97.png0156E993-60A2-43F2-A326-CBA3B7D4EF6C.png
 
Last edited:
It's tall, so may build up quite a convective air flow.
 
The effect of this news has allowed the forum to let off some steam, so I can hope that until tomorrow, or even the day after tomorrow, it will be calm and I will not read in the crime chronicles about another mass shooting in some state.
 
To be fair, the copper cylinder doesn't have that small of a surface area, and certainly emits infrared photons well. And I see some holes in it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top