NEC and Hitachi Develops Liquid Cooling System for PCs

Two Japanese firms, NEC Corporation and Hitachi Ltd., has collaborated and developed a liquid cooling system for hard disk drives (HDD) of desktop PCs. This system can reduce PC noise emanating from hard disk drives to 1/3 of current HDD models in Japan. According to Hitachi and NEC, their liquid cooling system has successfully reduced the noise level of liquid cooled PCs from 30 decibels to 25 decibels even when the PC is operating at maximum capacity. According to the Japanese firms, at this noise level, the PC is quieter than the average home DVD recorder.

According to NEC and Hitachi, with the development and enhancement of CPUs that delivers high performance and memory capacity, came the increase in heat value and heat density of PCs. The significance of hard disk drive noise was recently stated in a Samsung's white paper for their Noise Guard product, the company stated that consumers are more sensitive to hard disk drive noise and the average acoustic noise of HDD in normal operation is from 3.0 - 4.0 bels which easily distracts users and can lower their productivity levels.

Aside from delivering low noise, Hitachi and NEC's liquid cooling system also provides hard disk drives with a cooler environment. Monitoring heat on your HDD is important as hard disks are usually sensitive to heat. Operating your hard disks at temperatures over 50 degrees Celsius could lead to data loss.

The two companies accomplished their liquid cooling system by adopting Hitachi's advanced CPU liquid cooling cold plate and a HDD liquid cooling cold plate jointly developed by Hitachi and NEC. According to the Japanese firms, the liquid cooling system delivers world class cooling capability by increasing the heat transmission of the liquid cooling cold plate and optimizing the liquid coolant flow channel design.

Significant HDD noise reduction was achieved through the HDD cooling cold plate. The HDD cooling cold plate wraps the entire hard disk in a high performance noise absorbing material and vibration insulation which, according to the companies, effectively reduced the rise in the temperature of the hard disk drive and thus achieving a noise reduction of more than 10 decibels. Also contributing to the low noise of the whole system was the use of low speed radiator fans that has less than 1000rpm, a low noise micro-pump, and high quality materials that can absorb noise.

Hitachi and NEC's new liquid cooling system will soon be used in NEC's consumer desktop PCs for the Japanese market.

SOURCE:

NEC and Hitachi press release, NEC and Hitachi to Jointly Develop Liquid Cooling System for Desktop

PC, With World First Liquid Cooled Hard Disk Drive

New system realizes PCs quieter than the average home DVD recorder. URL: (http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/0707/3002.html)

Samsung white paper Noise Guard. URL: (http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/learningresource/whitepapers/LearningResource_NoiseGuard.html)