Asetek Unveils Liquid-Cooled Notebook Prototype

By Douglas Perry
published

Asetek has modified an Alienware M18x gaming notebook with liquid cooling and, of course, an overclocked processor.

Instead of the standard heat pipes, the system combines liquid cooling and heat exchange to provide room for CPU overclocking.

The system uses a 2.5 GHz / 3.5 GHz Intel Core i7-2920XM processor that runs at 4.4 GHz. The two GPUs were overclocked from 680 to 800 MHz. Asetek claims that the overclocking resulted in an 18 percent performance improvement in 3D Mark 11, 16 percent in PCMark Vantage and 23 percent in 3D Mark Vantage.

There was no information if and when this cooling system might be available and how much the modification may cost. However, a base M18x laptop lists already for $2000 and will cost at least $3300 if configured with a 2.5 GHz i7 2860QM processor (the i7-2920XM is not available in Dell's charts) and dual AMD Radeon 6990M GPUs.

Douglas Perry
32 Comments Comment from the forums
  • tinmann
    That's actually pretty Awesome. It would be cool if the keyboard was detachable or even if it folded back towards you transformer style or a touch screen style keyboard like on smart phones.
    Reply
  • alidan
    these arent meant to be use without being plugged into the wall...

    very nice, thank god someone is going thicker and heavier than thinner and lighter
    Reply
  • amuffin
    What happens if you run out of coolant? Say, in 1-2 years, that is about when even Corsair's own Hydro series screws itself over. Think about it, consumers won't spend another 3000 for a laptop, so there has to be a way of adding coolant? Especially in a laptop, where it is very compact and crucial to someones entire system.
    Reply
  • dontcrosthestreams
    if 6990m were something other than marketing fraud, i would like this computer.
    Reply
  • christarp
    Doesn't coolant start to gel up after a couple of years?
    Reply
  • e56imfg
    Battery life won't be affected as much as you might think. I think this is really cool. I've never seen a WC laptop before!
    Reply
  • danwat1234
    4.4GHZ momentary single core turbo, or 4.4GHZ constant all 4 cores? It's most probably just turbo because all 4 cores at 4.4GHZ would produce ALOT of heat, and probably ALOT of Vcore boost, and hence lower life.
    Reply
  • cee2cee
    For all of you that are commenting on battery life: yeah of course this thing won't have as much. But the point is this is made for people who need to move their pc around but still will plug it into a wall like lan party gamers or mobile production studio use.
    Reply
  • slicedtoad
    amuffinWhat happens if you run out of coolant? Say, in 1-2 years, that is about when even Corsair's own Hydro series screws itself over. Think about it, consumers won't spend another 3000 for a laptop, so there has to be a way of adding coolant? Especially in a laptop, where it is very compact and crucial to someones entire system.run out of coolant? those are metal pipes, water is going to take a long time to evaporate.

    christarpDoesn't coolant start to gel up after a couple of years?some does but water doesn't. I don't know what they are using but i'd imagine it would be something that won't change it's state.
    Reply
  • Marco925
    Looks expensive
    Reply