Radiators are the default when it comes to cooling components on your computer and virtually any other electronic device, but researchers may have found a way to cool your components without using these metal slotted pieces. A report by Science Daily (via Tom’s Hardware) highlights a new, more elegant approach to cooling that involves covering the entire device with skirts and copper.
If you are unfamiliar with radiators, they are usually made of copper or aluminum, two metals that serve as heat conductors. They often come with several metal fins that draw and dissipate heat from the main components of your device to prevent them from overheating. The heat is then expelled from the system by a nearby fan.
A team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of California, Berkeley, has published a study in Nature Electronics that replaces traditional radiators with a “conformal copper coating” and an “electric insulation layer” that spreads across the device.
This cooling method gives you “very similar performance or even better performance”
Researchers say that this method of cooling gives you “very similar performance or even better performance” compared to radiators. As it also eliminates the need for a bulky piece of metal, this can save a lot of space in electronic devices, which researchers say could increase the device’s power per unit volume by up to 740 percent. “You can arrange many more printed circuit boards in the same volume when using our coating, compared to if you use conventional radiators with liquid or air cooling,” the study explains.
Researchers are still evaluating the effectiveness of this coverage and plan to test it on power modules and graphics cards. It is too early to say whether this type of technology will be something that computer parts manufacturers will use to cover their components or whether you will have to do it yourself.
If the coating really serves as a viable alternative to radiators, it can drastically change the look of electronics in ways I really can’t fathom. Maybe the coating can even kill the radiator completely. While I will miss the funky shields that manufacturers create to disguise motherboard radiators, its absence would probably contribute to even more creative freedom in terms of the appearance and functionality of a number of components.
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