For cost reduction I was thinking about the following:
Complete Aluminium spreader block like in the other sample we received, instead of half copper.
-->This will probably have some impact on performance, but could be limited due to high heat pipe density & thin size
-->Would this avoid the nickle soldering?
Reduction of heat pipes
What if would remove 1 or 2 heat pipes, what would be the price impact?
This will probably have a larger impact on performance, unless the heat pipes are not the bottleneck in the heat transfer
Would it be feasible to make some different samples and check performance?
This way we can optimize cost vs performance.
The answers from Peter as below:
Yes, you reminded me that complete aluminum spreader block, actually can be feasible if we make design as below, please see below picture.
As you can see, half copper has been canceled, the heat pipes are nicely touching with CPU, at the same time it has superiority that very small pitch between each pipe is maximum in touching area that greatly absorbs heat and transfer through every pipe, this is good one to replace our original design, at the meantime it can eliminate copper block and nickle plated, because nickle plated is just for soldering, but this design no need any soldering in the base.
I think there is no need to remove the 2 heat pipes, because you’ve already tested 6 heat pipes, the performance was stable, if we changed into 4 pipes, actually is not good for cooling and perhaps the performance will drop dramatically, so cost reduction means meaningless.
Another question about design:
The current sample won't fit our technical compartment in combination with a 25mm we would like to use. Could you indicate what is the best way to proceed:
Either we move the heat pipes closer to the heat spreader (sharper bend and/or further to the outside) so we can add a 25mm fan at the outside?
--> In case we need to bend more outwards, perhaps interesting to move to a 140mm fan.
--> I can image that increasing the size of the aluminium fins will not add a lot of cost?
--> Or we bend the heat pipes further from the heat spreader, so we can put the fan in between fins & spreader.
The answers from Peter as below:
It’s up to you whether you would like to put fan upon fins or in between fins & spreader, because you told me before the height restriction was about 54mm, so I think better if we could put fan in between fins & spreader, this is good for saving more space, for the sharper bend of pipes, it depends on our bending machines, the capacity of bending is limited, can your team change the 3d drawing file about adjusting bending pipe into exact shape you are hoping for? Then our RD engineer he will evaluate whether this is workable to make.
Regarding to increase size of aluminum fins, I think it would not occur bigger cost, because aluminum fins are light and thin, so from 120mm into 140mm, only 20mm probably is small increased cost concerning if you would like to use 140mm fan.
