The Compressor Returns
Whether the knowledge comes from a school science class, television, or the Internet, many of us already know the basic principles of phase-change cooling. Gasses absorb heat during expansion, cooling the surrounding area. A gas that has been compressed to a liquid state absorbs even more heat as it changes phase back to a gaseous state, in the same way that water absorbs a great amount of energy as it boils. Gasses likewise give off heat during compression, which is why traditional refrigerators and air conditioners use an outside radiator to remove heat from the gas after it’s compressed. Cooling the compressed gas allows it to change to a liquid state, giving way to the term “condenser” as a name for the “hot-side” radiator.
The evaporator is where a CPU phase-change cooler departs from a traditional refrigerator or air conditioner. While the gas-to-gas heat exchangers of those familiar household appliances resemble a second radiator, a CPU chiller uses a much smaller block-shaped evaporator to draw heat away from the CPU.
What appears to be a chunk of copper at the end of a hose on the unit above is actually a hollow evaporation chamber connected to two high-pressure lines, with the higher-pressure side delivering the liquid and the lower-pressure side drawing away the resulting gas. The manufacturer for this device, Cooler Express is a Taiwanese firm that produces a variety of single-head, dual-head, chilled liquid and cloud-chamber coolers for electronics cooling, production processes, and laboratory research environments.
The list of parts included in the package will mostly be determined by the seller. Because the original bracket set did not support Intel’s most recent processors, FrozenCPU.com had a new mounting block machined out of aluminum to support LGA 1156 and LGA 1366 sockets. The aluminum mount is anodized black to match the original plastic part, and also includes a new socket support plate with corresponding holes. FrozenCPU.com adds the remaining hardware to complete the second mounting kit, allowing builders to borrow parts from the original mounting kit if needed. FrozenCPU.com sells the complete unit with both installation kits as its Cooler Express 2010 Super Single Evaporator CPU Cooling Unit.
