Passive cooling of CPU using heat pipes

[momo]

Has anybody come across the use of non pumped refrigerant passive cooling for Intel CPUs ?
Heat pipes and the like come to mind.

The size and shape of the enclosure will have to be adapted to the process.

The ideal to acheive is maximum reliability by using the least number of moving parts (CPU fans are small and by experience fail first - PSU/box ones can be doubled for redundancy) for a piece of transmitting equipment I'm involved with on a non-profit basis.

The use of a liquid<> vapour cycle in a heat pipe could solve the problem: liquid falls to cool hot area of cycle (near CPU) vapour travels away to cooler area and condenses back to fall onto CPU area. For solar collectors alcohols seem a favourite.

[momo]

Following the quest for the holy grail of passive cooling of heat production in CPUs came accross this Intel/AMD comparison... and what happens in the most drastic fault condition.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2001/09/17/hot_spot/

Definitely an engineering challenge to deal with 70-130w+ from <1" square... I admit I had not thought that far ... not even considering my entering into the realm of overclocking.

[interDOS]

Do a google image search for "heat pipes"

[momo]

Beaten to it brilliant idea from MSI includes motor for fans, all from the CPU generated heat!!

http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?f...sc&news_no=591

We finally solved our problem: an amateur TV station needed an on screen logo generator 24/7: budget 0€ - though we ended up buying a second hand alpha mixing card... and used an old Pentium I at 100Mhz and with the CPU and hard disk in Doze mode it is just left doing "near nothing" using very little electricity, probably survive even if the fans stop. PS it does not use windows of any sort - power cuts have to be tolerated and to see logos etc at start up just was not on.
The nearest pro unit for the job costs about 3000€ Aaagh!