[Dr David Thork]

I think reading this conversation between Dave and Thork actually killed some portion of my brain.

Mission accomplished.

[Cain]

I think reading this conversation between Dave and Thork actually killed some portion of my brain.

You too?

[Dr David Thork]

I don't see what the problem is. TFES has a very long tradition of someone getting a computer, they post their specs and everyone else tells them why they bought the wrong thing.

Here's my last computer for example.
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=4766.msg91913#msg91913

[Lord Dave]

I think reading this conversation between Dave and Thork actually killed some portion of my brain.

Why?
Please, do point out where my concerns are invalid because i'm an idiot.

Or is it that I'm being nice to thork that makes your brain rot and die?

[Dr David Thork]

Its mostly jelly. I'm getting a new computer ... so I'm excited about that. You've been polite and asked me some questions. Rushy is looking at his potato PC and wants the world to burn, so he types mean stuff.

[xasop]

Rushy is looking at his potato PC

Okay I lost here. You really should come on IRC from time to time, Thork.

[Dr David Thork]

Why? You all hate me. That wouldn't be fun for any of us.

[xasop]

Why?

So that you know how ridiculously over-spec'd Rushy's PC is before you go calling it a potato.

[Dr David Thork]

Maybe he's just jelly that I didn't waste as much money as him?
Maybe he tells lies about the computer he owns and just talks about his fantasy PC?
Maybe he is really a she and shouldn't have left the kitchen again.

But I don't care about any of these very probable outcomes enough, to find out on IRC.

[Rushy]

I think reading this conversation between Dave and Thork actually killed some portion of my brain.

Why?
Please, do point out where my concerns are invalid because i'm an idiot.

Or is it that I'm being nice to thork that makes your brain rot and die?

It's your extremely... interesting opinions on heat transfer. Most systems can passively radiate more heat than you'd expect, in addition to handling higher temperatures than you'd expect, and while there are certainly a lot of things to critique about Thork's new Wondows 10 machine, not being able to dissipate heat isn't one of them. A laptop or all-in-one can dissipate 200W pretty easily and you'd only notice them getting a little lukewarm to the touch, and that's assuming the device is sitting at 100% for extended periods of time. I doubt Thork does anything like that.

However, instead of just saying that, Thork responds with "yeah well it has heat pipes" which is also hilarious.

Maybe he's just jelly that I didn't waste as much money as him?
Maybe he tells lies about the computer he owns and just talks about his fantasy PC?
Maybe he is really a she and shouldn't have left the kitchen again.

But I don't care about any of these very probable outcomes enough, to find out on IRC.

Watching Thork quickly 180 from "Rushy has a potato" to "Rushy is just jealous he didn't buy a cheap all-in-one Dell" makes this thread worth the read.

[Lord Dave]

I think reading this conversation between Dave and Thork actually killed some portion of my brain.

Why?
Please, do point out where my concerns are invalid because i'm an idiot.

Or is it that I'm being nice to thork that makes your brain rot and die?

It's your extremely... interesting opinions on heat transfer. Most systems can passively radiate more heat than you'd expect, in addition to handling higher temperatures than you'd expect, and while there are certainly a lot of things to critique about Thork's new Wondows 10 machine, not being able to dissipate heat isn't one of them. A laptop or all-in-one can dissipate 200W pretty easily and you'd only notice them getting a little lukewarm to the touch, and that's assuming the device is sitting at 100% for extended periods of time. I doubt Thork does anything like that.

However, instead of just saying that, Thork responds with "yeah well it has heat pipes" which is also hilarious.

Really?
I've got an old CPU(95W) and mid to high range powered GPU and it's constantly blasting out air even though it's got a lot of space(I mean, it's a desktop so the fan will run all the time).  I assumed that passive heat dissipation wasn't easy given how much power is going through it especially since you've got the GPU and CPU squeezed into such a tight space.

How does it do it?  Cause I remember the old laptop days of very hot, high fan speed gaming laptops.  (still have one actually).

[Dr David Thork]

I've got an old CPU(95W) and mid to high range powered GPU and it's constantly blasting out air even though it's got a lot of space(I mean, it's a desktop so the fan will run all the time).  I assumed that passive heat dissipation wasn't easy given how much power is going through it especially since you've got the GPU and CPU squeezed into such a tight space.

How does it do it? 

Heat pipes.

...
However, instead of just saying that, Thork responds with "yeah well it has heat pipes" which is also hilarious.

Uh-huh.

Maybe he's just jelly that I didn't waste as much money as him?
Maybe he tells lies about the computer he owns and just talks about his fantasy PC?
Maybe he is really a she and shouldn't have left the kitchen again.

But I don't care about any of these very probable outcomes enough, to find out on IRC.

Watching Thork quickly 180 from "Rushy has a potato" to "Rushy is just jealous he didn't buy a cheap all-in-one Dell" makes this thread worth the read.

Get back to the kitchen. 

[Rushy]

Really?
I've got an old CPU(95W) and mid to high range powered GPU and it's constantly blasting out air even though it's got a lot of space(I mean, it's a desktop so the fan will run all the time).  I assumed that passive heat dissipation wasn't easy given how much power is going through it especially since you've got the GPU and CPU squeezed into such a tight space.

How does it do it?  Cause I remember the old laptop days of very hot, high fan speed gaming laptops.  (still have one actually).

Back in the olden days laptops used a lot more energy, were larger, and had bigger and worse batteries. This is also why, as you've probably noticed, the power bricks for mobile device power cords are much smaller. It's not that our transformer technology is better (it isn't) it's just that the devices we use now simply don't use as much energy as they used to.

This also happens to be why battery life is so much better in newer devices. Our batteries are pretty much the same, but the circuits utilizing them aren't nearly as power hungry. As a good comparison, each core on a Raspberry Pi 3 (a ~$35 computer) is about as powerful as a Pentium 2, 300 MHz CPU (a $2000 CPU at its release!) The TDP of the Pentium II was about 45W, but the TDP of the RPI is only 5W with all four cores running! With more modern laptops, you're looking at even more processor savings in computation versus electric usage. This is why, even when you see a tiny laptop with a ~60W+ TDP, you'll probably never see it actually use that amount of energy, because the amount of computational power in even something like a phone vastly and hilariously outweighs just about any task a consumer will put the computer through, which leads to the popular increase of passive cooling and savings to the consumer.

Also, overheating is never a problem in a modern computer. There are so many safety circuits in place that throttle power when overheating, you'd have to do some serious BIOS hacking just to get a computer to ignore those safety mechanisms and overheat itself. It's practically impossible to cook any computer components these days without the computer already being broken in some other way. Modern CPUs can even detect when they don't have a heatsink sitting on their die, and will instantly shut down instead of trying to boot.

All in all, heat dissipation in a modern, mainstream consumer all-in-one device is a complete nonissue.

[Dr David Thork]

That's a very eloquent answer to something, but it isn't the answer to Lord Dave's question.

He wants to know ... How is it my desktop is loud and noisy, and yet Thork is buying a PC of similar power in a smaller form factor and it won't be as noisy.

The answer to that is heat pipes.

Heat pipes haven't been in computers all that long. It is a relatively new technology. It gave rise to the 'gaming laptop' and is the reason in the past you couldn't have a gaming laptop. Of course now, people manage to stuff gtx 1080's into laptops. Heat pipes are a very efficient way of getting the heat away from the chip without any energy cost. It is a closed loop system and the vapour chamber gets heat away quickly to a place where it can be exhausted by a fan. So that leads the question ... why hasn't Lord Dave's desktop got heat pipes? And the answer to that is cost. They are expensive, which is one of the reasons sff computers have always costed more. This is evidenced by AMD's latest CPU coolers.


Notice the cheaper cooler on the right for lower end 65W CPUs. And as soon as they need to cool 95W monsters they use the one on the left, complete with heat pipes. But that is a more expensive heatsink.

Then consider the PC I'm getting.


That is going to pull the heat right to the edge of the case, where it will be blown straight out by the fan. To engineer that into a case, you have to make the heat pipes fit your case and your exact motherboard + your GPU is going to need to be in a fixed place (hard with discrete cards). That isn't great for a desktop, because its going to push the price of your case up. So when you bought your PC or case, they didn't add any. But if you bought a sff case like a Shuttle or a Zotac thing (where heat will be an issue), the case wasn't $60. It is more likely $250 and comes with the motherboard, PSU and heat pipes all built in as barebones. You rarely see sff cases that aren't barebones builds, because they need a bespoke heat solution. This is why at the same time as gaming laptops arrived on the market ... bare bones and small form factor PCs became a thing.

Of course you could go one better than heat pipes in a desktop and add water cooling ... but that is expensive too.

So heat pipes. Make AIOs possible, but also push the cost of the device up compared with a desktop box.

Lord Dave doesn't care that processors are more efficient in this context. They aren't in this context. I have a desktop grade CPU in a sff ... how is that possible these days? Heat pipes.

[Pete Svarrior]

Heat pipes haven't been in computers all that long. It is a relatively new technology.

Ah, fuck it, it's not like my non-involvement is making this any less painful.

Thork, I know you're old, but marvelling over 1940s breakthroughs is pushing it. Heat pipes were in use in modern computing since the early '90s. Fuck, it's only been a few months since I serviced an early-2000s laptop which used them extensively. This is not a new development, nor is it in any way revolutionary (anymore). Processors run much cooler than they did in the past. Compare something like a Pentium IV to a modern CPU and this becomes abundantly obvious.

[Dr David Thork]

Head pipes in computers have only been around 15 years or so. Don't be giving me the "they were invented in the 1940's" nonsense.

For examples of application - aerospace and astronautics in the 1970's; energy and conservation in the 1980's; industrial and natural energy utilization in the 1990's; computers and electronics cooling in the 2000's; and possibly global warming and environment protection in the 2010's.

And that technology took a while to proliferate. It wasn't like they just appeared over night or that the technology hasn't improved over time to allow better cooling solutions that weren't possible 15 years ago.

And no, processors don't run any cooler. Where do you get this shit from? You can go back to the early 2000's and the processors for desktops were still around 65W-95W TDP!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CPU_power_dissipation_figures#Pentium_4

Sure, today's do more and a 15W version would outperform those old P4s, but for desktop they kept the heat/power the same and improved performance to give you a tangible increase in performance generation over generation. They didn't make them run cooler as you just made up.

[Pete Svarrior]

And no, processors don't run any cooler. Where do you get this shit from?

Honestly, it's knowledge that's so extremely common that I actually struggle to come up with a justification. High-end Pentium IVs could easily run at 70°C-80°C, while a modern i7 will usually oscillate somewhere around 55°C-65°C. The cooling technology has not changed, despite your assertion to the contrary (heat pipes have been commonplace since the 1990s).

And no, processors don't run any cooler. Where do you get this shit from? You can go back to the early 2000's and the processors for desktops were still around 65W-95W TDP!

Yes, you can cherrypick low-powered CPUs of the time and argue that they should be compared to today's top-range. The top range these days, something like an i7 8700k, runs at 95W TDP. An i7 7700 is 65W TDP. Comparable P4s/PDs were around 115W-130W. I didn't know where to take "this shit" from, but you gave me a handy Wikipedia link, so I'm quoting it for you.

Perhaps shockingly, there is a correlation between TDP and normal operating temperatures between these time periods. If the cooling technology has improved, how come CPUs with comparable TDPs run at pretty much the same temperatures still?

[Dr David Thork]

Actually, it is you that is cherry picking. You are using 115W examples from the past ... those termed extreme editions. But today's equivalent would be the Kaby Lake X ... a 112W processor that runs every bit as hot*.

And you'll find that 70-80 degrees depends completely on your cooling solution. Intel chips can actually run up to around 95 degrees (today the same as yesteryear) before they thermally throttle and Intel's Tjunction is set at 100 degrees as stated on their website for any desktop processor you choose.
https://ark.intel.com/products/126686/Intel-Core-i7-8700-Processor-12M-Cache-up-to-4_60-GHz

So, yeah, there is no evidence at all they run cooler. The facts state they run as hot as they ever did. That's the desktop package and it hasn't changed much since they put the CPU onto the motherboard instead of using cartridges.

[Pete Svarrior]

I can't help you, Thork. If you want to pretend that cooling technology has significantly improved, I won't stop you. I'll just add it to the pile of evidence of why nobody should ever listen to any of your claims on technology.

I will, however, invite you to consider the fact that you're running one of the coolest CPUs available for desktops in the past 2 decades. I'm sure it's a complete coincidonk and it was totally heat pipes that magick'd themselves into existence despite already being there. But perhaps if you have a moment of spare time, consider the correlation between TDP and standard operating temperatures, and how that hasn't changed in those 2 decades.

[Dr David Thork]

No, I'm not running one of the coolest CPUs in decades. It has a 65W TDP.

TDP!

Thermal Design Power.

That does not tell me how much power the chip consumes. If it boosts up it can be dragging 100W of power from the wall no problem. When it is running near idle it will sip just a few watts. TDP is a measure of the HEAT generated and a 65W TDP processor from 2001 will run the same temperature as a 65W TDP processor from 2018 if they have the exact same surface area and cooling solution.

The IPC will be improved in the 2018 version. It may have more cores. But if today's chip runs at 67 degrees in your system with a cooling solution and you could find brackets to fit the same solution to your 2001 chip, that too would sit at 67 degrees if both are under the same percentage load.

There is no way on earth you can say I'm runnig one of the coolest CPUs in decades. It just isn't true. And it doesn't matter that I am using AMD with a slightly worse IPC than the intel equivalent. It doesn't matter that the clock speed is lower. Both will get up to 95 degrees and then throttle and the cooler is going to dissipate the same heat from both at that 95 degrees max. If I have a better cooler, it will take more power to get to that 95 degrees so I can squeeze more performance out.

Thermal design power. Mine is 65W. That's been a desktop standard for a very long time. It aint run no cooler. Faster yes, cooler, no.

So how is it we can get these 65W TDP chips into laptops and AIOs these days when they make the same heat? Better frickin' heat pipes.